Kahne wins the Coca-Cola 600

[media-credit id=38 align=”alignright” width=”245″][/media-credit]Kasey Kahne held off Denny Hamlin on Sunday night to win NASCAR’s longest race, the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway.

“It felt really good to put the entire race together and have speed all night long. The Quaker State Chevrolet was really fast, the adjustments were great. It feels good to get a win for Hendrick Motorsports.” Kahne said.

This was Kahne’s 13th career, his first win of the season and the first since he joined Hendrick Motorsports. At Darlington teammate Jimmy Johnson gave Hendrick its 200th cup series win; now Kahne increases the total to 201.

“I said this back on our media tour, that I think we have the best balance and we were excited about the year, the way (crew chief) Kenny (Francis) fit in. We knew how Kasey would run. I’ve seem Kasey drive. Knowing that we gave him the equipment, and when we ran so good everywhere we’ve been, and he got in the car and did the same thing. He and Jeff (Gordon) have just had rotten luck.” Rick Hendrick said.

Kyle Busch finished third, Greg Biffle fourth and Brad Keselowski finished fifth.

“Felt like we were really good. Certain small adjustments can mean so much these days. The M&M’s guys did an awesome job. We had a really good race car. We just didn’t have quite enough there at the end.” Busch said.

After a miscue on his pit stop with 45 laps to go, Johnson had to serve a stop-n-go penalty after his gas man left the pit box. He cycled back into 13th place, one lap down and finished 11th.

“We had a couple little mistakes on pit road tonight. It happens. Last week things couldn’t have gone any better, and then this week we had a few little issues.” Johnson said.

Making her first 600 race, Danica Patrick started 40th and finished 30th, 5 laps down.

“We brought the GoDaddy car home and one of the goals was to finish. I would have liked to have been a little faster overall, but I think there were some times in there when it was decent.” Patrick said.