Full Throttle

NASCAR Sprint Cup driver and Team Mopar team owner/driver Kasey Kahne will return to his roots on Thursday for the 68th annual “Turkey Night Grand Prix” at Toyota Speedway atIrwindale.

Leading sprint car and midget car racers return to Toyota Speedway at Irwindale on Thursday night for the 68th running of the Turkey Night Grand Prix.

The race, the final event this year at the half-mile Toyota Speedway paved oval, is a holiday tradition that features USAC National and Western series drivers.

Over the years, some NASCAR Sprint Cup and Indy car drivers also have made cameo appearances in the race, including Tony Stewart and Casey Mears.

This year Kasey Kahne will steer a Mopar-powered Seymour Paints entry for his Kasey Kahne Racing squad in the event sanctioned by the United States Auto Club (USAC) as part of the Mopar Midget National Championship.

Its a track he knows well having been runner-up three times in five attempts.

Last year it had been more than four years since Kahne had driven a United States Auto Club (USAC) Midget at California’s Irwindale Speedway.

Problems encountered in practice and qualifying relegated Kahne’s machine to one of the two “last chance” races just to make the field for the 98-lap finale.

But once he was in the show, Kahne regained the form that had propelled him to the 2000 USAC National Midget championship, knifing spectacularly but steadily through traffic and picking up second place only in the closing laps.

Past Turkey Night champions include legends like A.J. Foyt, Parnelli Jones, Gary Bettenhausen and Mel Kenyon, and more recently Tony Stewart, Jason Leffler and defending champ Dave Darland.