Roush Fenway Racing's Greg Biffle hopes to keep up momentum at Phoenix
Roush Fenway Racing's Greg Biffle finished fifth in his last start in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series at Phoenix International Raceway. // Jeff Robinson, NASCAR Scene
For Roush Fenway Racing's Greg Biffle, the next two races offer an opportunity to gain a lot of ground in the standings at a pair of tracks where he has a solid record of success.
After collecting a pair of top-10 finishes in his last two races with his Greg Erwin-led team, Biffle heads to Phoenix International Raceway, a track where he has four top-10 finishes, including three top-fives, in the last 11 races, for Sunday’s Checker O’Reilly Auto Parts 500.
Biffle has also won three times in the season-ending race at Homestead-Miami Speedway, where the 2009 NASCAR Sprint Cup season will conclude.
While Biffle enters the final races seventh in the standings, 247 points behind leader Jimmie Johnson, he’s only 11 behind sixth-place Juan Pablo Montoya, 69 behind fifth-place Tony Stewart and another seven back from fourth-place Kurt Busch.
As he looks back over the last few races, Biffle sees a lot that has happened to shake up the standings, including wrecks involving fellow contenders in the Chase For The Sprint Cup at Talladega Superspeedway and then Johnson's crash last weekend at Texas Motor Speedway.
Those incidents have him believing that anything is possible at this point.
"I really think, obviously up until last week, Talladega was really the turning point in the Chase, I felt," he says. "Both Mark Martin and Jeff Gordon got in that wreck and Jimmie Johnson split through and finished sixth or seventh, and that was disastrous for those guys. Mark is on his roof going down the stretch, and Jimmie Johnson is finishing in the top 10. So that really hurt their opportunity.
"If you look back at that one race, Mark might be leading the points today, you know. So is it over yet? I don't think so. Because anything can happen. There's a lot of pressure on the 48 team [of Johnson] right now because of what happened last week. So he still has a fairly significant lead [73 points over Martin], but there's a lot of pressure on him, and Mark runs very well at these last two race tracks and so do a few of the other guys out there. So I think anything can happen. I still feel like anything can happen."
Biffle is hoping to take advantage of any opportunity he can, too.
His team is trying to end 2009 on a high note, not only to get the best possible finishing position but also to set the tone for 2010.
Roush Fenway Racing has obviously struggled this year to match its past successes, but Biffle sees strides being made in the right direction.
He seems pleased that the team has been taking the time to make the right steps, though - such as working with the new Ford engine. The new model has been tested this season in just one race. Biffle thinks that it needs to be back in a non-restricted race this season - it was used at Talladega - and then continue to be studied and slowly worked in over the course of next year.
Instead of rushing to make any change to improve on a season in which Biffle has not yet won and Roush Fenway only has three victories overall, the group and manufacturer are making sure the engine has been fully studied and tested before implementing it for every race.
"I'm very, very excited about it," Biffle says. "The engine looks promising. It ran well in the restrictor-plate races, both cars at Talladega. That was a huge statement for that engine not to have any issues in either car. So I think it's full speed ahead with the new engine. It's going to take a little while for it to get implemented in all these cars.
"And I know that I raised my hand and said, 'You know, hey, the first third of the season instead of us jumping all over the map, because you really have to have these cars built differently for the engine bay to work, I said I'll run the old engine for the first third.'"
For now, Biffle and his group are focused on this season and getting as much out of the year as possible.
They look over the year and see some missed opportunities - and even find comfort in those.
"We’ve been very close on a number of races that we’ve just missed by a little bit, either a two-tire call got in our way or a four-tire call got in our way, or staying on the race track when we should have come in, or coming in when we should have stayed out," team co-owner Jack Roush says. "We’ve just seemed to be off a little, and it’s not something that was foreseeable, but sometimes you can flip the coin and you can get heads three times in a row, and other times it will wind up tails. Some of the calls that they made have not worked out as well as they should be expected to on average, and that, too, will change. It’ll swing back in our favor next year.”
Biffle is taking that same approach to the final two races - trying to get as much as possible out of the season. He has finished as high as second in the standings, in 2005, and wants to close this year as high in the points as possible.
"Just try and get best prepared as we can for next year and take these last two races and try and win and get our program turned around," he says of his plans for the final pair of races.
