It’s official. Kasey Kahne is returning to a full-time NASCAR schedule next season, eight years after he announced his retirement. Kahne has been announced as Spire Motorsports’ No. 77 Chevrolet driver in the Truck Series. And there is good reason why it’s the third-tier NASCAR Series in which Kahne has chosen to make that return.
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Kahne was in conversation with Kevin Harvick on the Speed podcast. The 18-time Cup race winner spoke about why he stepped away and also revealed that he had detached himself from NASCAR to a certain extent because of how things ended back in 2018.
“I was kind of frustrated. The last couple of years, my body was just giving up on me to run those full Cup races week after week, and be able to be just as sharp at the end of the race or later in the season as it got hotter and more humid and all the stuff as I wanted to be,” Kahne told Harvick. “And so I was frustrated with that and just how it all ended.”
The retirement itself came from that inability to run full Cup races, which usually run for around 3 to 4 hours. In 2018, after the September race in Darlington, Kahne suffered chronic, extreme heat exhaustion, highly elevated heart rates, and an inability to manage his sweat-to-hydration ratio. After missing a few races post-Darlington, Kahne announced his immediate retirement in October 2018.
Kahne’s last full season was 2017. In 2018, he ran 25 races in the No. 95 Levaine Family Racing Chevrolet before stepping away from NASCAR altogether. After retiring, Kahne initially stayed away from NASCAR, but within a couple of years he was watching races regularly.
“I didn’t watch much for probably the first couple of years… I watch it all the time (now)… but there isn’t as much practice and things anymore either, so it’s more just races,” Kahne said. “ But yeah, I mean I keep pretty close attention, but it did take a couple years.”
While NASCAR’s Cup Series calendar runs for 36 races and most of them are anywhere between 3 to 4 hours long, Kahne is unlikely to ever feel confident enough to run those lengthy races again. The Truck calendar offers relief: 25 races instead of 36, each lasting 1.5 to 2 hours instead of 3 to 4.
Kahne made a one-race return in NASCAR last year, in the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series. He drove the No. 33 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet at Rockingham Speedway, and that race probably told him he still has what it takes to drive stock cars. Kahne qualified 4th and finished 14th.
Kahne was recently approached by Spire owner Jeff Dickerson to compete in the Truck Series in 2027. He revealed to Harvick that it wasn’t the offer he was expecting to come his way.
“Big surprise, blown out of the water as well when Jeff Dickerson came up to me, and we were talking at Knoxville Nationals this year at the sprint car race out there, and he was like, ‘Yeah, we want you to come and run full-time.’” Kahne said. “And I was like, ‘Full-time?’ So it was a big surprise to me.”
“I got thinking about it and to get that type of an opportunity. I’ve been out for eight years, I think eight or nine somewhere in there, and to get that type of an opportunity to run a truck and be with a team with a lot of success, I was like, man, I can’t pass this up,” he added. “So yeah, I got excited pretty quick. Talked to Amy a lot about it, and this makes a lot of sense. So yeah, we’re excited to do that.”
Kahne has an incredible average finish of 1.2 in the Truck Series. Although his sample size is small, it’s still a very good-looking CV. Kahne raced in a total of six Truck races. He finished second in one of them, and won the other five. The last of those wins came in his last truck outing in Charlotte in 2015.
While racing a full 25-race schedule, it will be hard to keep that average finish going; it’s not too early for us to start calling him the favorite to win the 2027 Truck title. But how long does he plan on running the Spire Chevrolet truck?
“Right now, I think just a one-year deal is kind of how it’s in my mind,” Kahne revealed. “Yeah, just really see how it goes.”
With Kahne back in trucks, it will make for an interesting watch, and it’ll be intriguing to see how he competes against the young talent in the series.