LOUDON, N.H. -- Kasey Kahne's red race car coasted into the garage area, wisps of white smoke floating out from underneath the rear end. Just 67 laps into Sunday's event, his race at New Hampshire Motor Speedway was finished. The next few weeks will determine whether his championship hopes are as well.

Kahne became the first participant in NASCAR's playoff to face a real hurdle, in the form of a blown engine that struck early and resulted in a 38th-place finish in the postseason's opening event. By the time Mark Martin reached Victory Lane, the No. 9 truck was shut tight, its crew on the way home. And with good reason -- they have plenty of work ahead of them if they hope to become a factor in the final nine races of the Chase.

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We just have to work extra hard now. I don't know how this all works. You never know in the Chase if you can have a mulligan or not. This team is doing a nice job. We'll be 12th when we leave here. Hopefully, we can make gains in those final nine.

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-- KASEY KAHNE

After Sunday, a title for the Richard Petty Motorsports outfit would take nothing short of a historic comeback. Kahne finds himself 161 points behind Martin after his blown engine, a deficit 22 points greater than the largest any Chase champion has ever overcome after the first race. And that champion was Jimmie Johnson, who was 139 points back after a dropped cylinder in 2006 sent him to a 39th-place finish, and preceded a huge comeback that netted the three-time defending champion his first title.

Does Kahne have a Johnsonian rally within him? We'll find out beginning next weekend at Dover International Speedway.

"It's disappointing. It's better than last week, because we wouldn't have been in the Chase," Kahne said referring to the regular-season finale last weekend at Richmond, where he clinched his postseason berth. "We just have to work extra hard now. I don't know how this all works. You never know in the Chase if you can have a mulligan or not. This team is doing a nice job. We'll be 12th when we leave here. Hopefully, we can make gains in those final nine."

Sunday, he never really had a chance. Kahne started 11th and was in the top 10 before strange sounds began emanating from beneath the hood of his No. 9 car. He knew immediately what it was. "I'm having a problem," he radioed to crew chief Kenny Francis. "Blowing up."

Indeed it was. "We lost an engine, I don't know why," Kahne said in the garage area. "I felt it start to run a little bit rough down the backstretch, and it broke on the frontstretch. I thought that it was coming. The gauges all looked good, but I knew that it was coming."

It's another blow in what's been a tough stretch for everyone associated with RPM, which announced last week that it will absorb Yates Racing and compete as a four-car Ford organization next season. But in the meantime, the growing pains are evident. The team's engine department is bracing for layoffs, its vice president left after reportedly getting into an argument with the organization's co-owner, and even Kahne claimed not to know who the ultimate decision-maker would be. Now there's the more pressing matter of facing a deficit greater than one any champion has ever overcome.

In fact, four times in the Chase's five-year history, the points leader leaving New Hampshire has gone on to win the championship -- a fact that certainly bodes well for Martin, whose victory Sunday put him 35 points up on the field. The lone exception is Johnson in 2006. That was also the only time a Chase winner has finished worse than sixth at New Hampshire and gone on to win the title. Johnson placed sixth and second at Loudon the past two years, while Tony Stewart was second in 2005 and Kurt Busch won here to open the inaugural Chase.

And yet, others are reluctant to count Kahne out.

"You're not going to know anything after this race, I'm telling you," Martin said. "You could have a terrible finish and run here and then come back and rebound from it. It's going to take five races to see. And then when it's four to go, the picture is going to get much clearer. I wouldn't get too carried away about how everything lands in this race."

Denny Hamlin would agree. Hamlin has had some rough races to open previous Chases, and believes he brooded over them too much. In retrospect, that only put him in a deeper hole.

"You can't let one race get you down or bother you," he said. "You can go on a roll here in the last 10 races and really perform well. I kind of got impatient when I had a bad race early in the Chase the last couple of years, and it's cost me toward the end of the year when I was trying to make up those points. I think you've got to maintain your confidence no matter what happened the first two or three races, and maintain your composure for the most part."

Video: Kahne loses his engine 66 laps into Sylvania 300
More: Even Kahne has questions about leadership at RPM