![\"\"](\"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/files\/2018\/06\/kahne.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Appearing on SiriusXM Nascar’s “The Late Shift,” Leavine Family Racing owner Rob Leavine talked about the teams recent decision to fire Travis Mack after just 15 races with driver Kasey Kahne.<\/p>\n
Lead engineer Jon Leonard replaced Mack.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt wasn\u2019t just off-the-cuff, it was well thought out,\u201d Leavine said. \u201cKasey, I kept him in the loop continually because it was about, when I hired him last year, it was about giving him the best car we could. I just didn\u2019t feel to a point we were doing that. And you just can\u2019t keep doing the same thing if you expect a different result.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs you well know when you sign up for these jobs what\u2019s expected. You don\u2019t get any participation trophies. Results rule. It\u2019s long hours and a lot of time away from home and those type of things. So we just had to make a change. Obviously it wasn\u2019t changing the driver. Our driver\u2019s been doing a great job.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kahne and the No. 95 team sits 28th in the driver points, a year after being 27th with Michael McDowell.<\/p>\n
The best finish for the team has been 17th which took place at Texas, Talladega and Dover.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m excited and thankful for the opportunity,\u201d Leonard said in a team release this week. \u201cI\u2019ve had a little experience at it before, so I can appreciate and understand what is expected and needed. A\u00a0lot of my role will stay the same \u2013 set-up preparation, history analysis, and practice decisions from an engineering standpoint.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Appearing on SiriusXM Nascar’s “The Late Shift,” Leavine Family Racing owner Rob Leavine talked about the teams recent decision to fire Travis Mack after just 15 races with driver Kasey Kahne. Lead engineer Jon Leonard replaced Mack. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t just off-the-cuff, it was well thought out,\u201d Leavine said. \u201cKasey, I kept him in the loop […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18354,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,786,788],"tags":[789,355,380,708],"coauthors":[675],"class_list":{"0":"post-18353","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cup-series","8":"category-nascar-topstory","9":"category-news","10":"tag-front","11":"tag-kasey-kahne","12":"tag-leavine-family-racing","13":"tag-nascar"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18353"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18353\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18353"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=18353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}