Greg Biffle doesn't plan to hold back in regular-season finale

By SceneDaily Staff

Saturday, September 06, 2008

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Marc Serota / Getty Images for NASCAR

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RICHMOND, Va. – Greg Biffle has no reason to hold anything back.

Sixth in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series standings and needing only to start Sunday’s postponed Chevy Rock & Roll 400 at Richmond International Raceway to clinch a berth in the championship field, Biffle can run hard without having to risk missing NASCAR’s playoff.

A win would give the Roush Fenway Racing driver 10 bonus points to carry into the Chase For The Sprint Cup. Any other result will have no bearing on his playoff standing. Drivers are seeded in the Chase based on regular-season victories, with 10 points awarded for each.

Biffle hasn’t won yet this season and, unless he takes the victory at Richmond, will start the Chase with no bonus points. That will put him 80 points behind points leader Kyle Busch, who has eight victories.

“It truly doesn’t matter where I finish [on Sunday],” Biffle said. “That’s kind of an unusual situation. I think it’s the first time ever in a points event for a NASCAR race that it doesn’t matter where I finish unless I win. That’s the obvious thing, but unless I win, that’s not really gonna change my outcome.”

With their Chase berth secure, Biffle and his Roush Fenway Racing team feel free to experiment with things that could boost their title hopes in the final 10 races. And they plan to do just that.

“We can try some things to the car, maybe on pit stops and stuff like that, to try and gain track position. [We can] do what we can do to try and win,” he said. “We’re gonna do that. We do that every week, so we’re not gonna do anything different there, but we can take a little bit of a gamble.

“The other thing is with the limited amount of practice, we’re already set to go for [the race], so the car is already done and is set up and is about like we ran it in the spring, just a little bit different as far as bar and shock package. So there’s nothing real off the wall we’re gonna try as far as learning something, so we’re just gonna go for it.”

Biffle enters the race coming off a solid second-place finish in last Sunday’s Pepsi 500 at Auto Club Speedway.

While Biffle was no match for race-winner Jimmie Johnson, who dominated the race, he clearly had one of the best cars in the field. And Biffle can only be encouraged by that performance as he looks ahead to the Chase.

“If it wasn’t for the 48 [Johnson], we would have looked like a hero because we had about a straightaway lead on third place the whole night,” he said. “If we could have just got that blue car, the 48 car, out of the way up front, we would have looked like heroes, but we’re getting there.”