Barely breathing Biffle isn't giving up

Greg Biffle sits in his car during practice at Kansas Speedway on October 2, 2009. (Photo by Matthew Stockman/Getty Images)

For drivers Mark Martin, Jimmie Johnson, Juan Pablo Montoya and Tony Stewart life is good and the living is easy.

For Greg Biffle however the life support machines have been pulled bedside and the paddles on the defibrillator are being charged.

Biffle’s effort in the 2009 version of NASCAR’s Chase was certainly a weak one in the first two races of the 10 that make up the season ending run for the Sprint Cup Championship. After poor runs at New Hampshire and Dover, Biffle headed into last weeks stop at Kansas barely breathing.

Then just when it looked like the sheet was getting ready to be pulled up, a third place finish last Sunday at Kansas has given a spark of life to Biffle’s near death experience 

But is it enough to locate a pulse and keep those hopes alive?

Biffle admits that his Chase up until Kansas didn’t produce the kind of results that make him and the No. 16 Roush-Fenway Racing team a championship caliber contender.

“If you would've said I'm going to finish ninth at Loudon and 13th at Dover, I would've told you that you were crazy, because Dover is like it's our house,” Biffle said. “We've run so well there. Simply from the fact that if you look at my last three finishes at Dover -- a third, a win and a third, and leading the race in the spring with five laps to go -- I felt like a left a little unfinished business, you know what I mean? And so it was disappointing to go there and finish 13th -- really disappointing.”

After his third place run at Kansas and ten bonus points for leading the most laps, 113, Biffle moved up one spot to eighth in the points. So while his Chase hopes may be in intensive care, he hasn’t flat lined yet.

Prior to making the Chase, Biffle and the team were certainly starting to show a little green around the gills. They’ve gone winless all season and have been struggling with the chassis setup on the Ford Fusions resulting in mediocre finishes. But Biffle said the team has been chipping away at it and as the series heads to California this Sunday, it’s with a renewed optimism.

“This front-end geometry combination that we've been trying to get worked out is something that I've never run in this car before,” Biffle said. “This is all new territory for me. I basically fired off at Kansas with stuff I've run in practice and Happy Hour before trying to get it right and adjusting it, and on Sunday morning we looked at it and made some more adjustments and said, 'Here we go.' I'm telling you what, that thing was awesome and I'm looking forward to working with it more.”

Biffle has one win (2005) and four top-five finishes at Auto Club Speedway with an average finish of 17.1.  Earlier this season at California, Biffle was running the fastest laps on the track in second place and catching the leader when he stopped on the front changer's air hose during a late-race pit stop. He restarted 11th with 35 laps to go and finished fourth.

Based on that strong run though Biffle is now in a quandary.

“I came very close to winning the spring race in California and one would have to argue that if I wouldn't have stopped on the air hose, I would have won that race,” Biffle said. “I was leading, came in, and went out 14th and finished fourth, so do I throw away that setup and just throw it in the garbage can and say, 'This isn't good enough,' and start like we did at Kansas? There's a fair amount of switching stuff over as far as shocks and bump stops and switching A-frames around, so it's a commitment we have to make."

No matter what setup the team decides to use this weekend, Biffle knows his Chase hopes are barely alive and from this point on it’s a life or death situation in terms of making an impact in the remaining races.

"That's our attitude. That's how we went into Kansas and I made a commitment to stick with it,” Biffle said. “We feel like we're starting to understand it better now. It's kind of a leap of faith, so to speak, because you're taking something that's working well and now you're just gonna flush it down the toilet and start completely with a clean sheet of paper. That's sort of difficult, but that's what it's taken us to get competitive again."
 

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