Let’s face it despite Jimmie Johnson’s little hiccup in Texas last week, barring his abduction by aliens or some other bizarre catastrophe in one of the two final races, when the checkered flag falls at Homestead we will have a four time NASCAR Sprint Cup series champ.
About the only thing left for everyone else to do is it get ready for 2010.
And of course maybe win one of the next two races.
Johnson and his Chad Knaus led team won three of the first four races in NASCAR’s ten race Chase giving them a cushion in the standings that made it nearly impossible for anyone else to overcome. In short, they’ve got this Chase thing figured out.
Despite the overwhelming odds of Johnson not winning the Chase though there are some drivers that feel it’s not over yet. Drivers like Roush-Fenway Racing’s Greg Biffle.
Biffle is seventh in points, 247 markers out of first; a seemingly insurmountable deficit to make up. And while he knows he may not be in the running for the championship, Biffle says second place Mark Martin and even third place Jeff Gordon aren’t done yet.
“Is it over yet? I don't think so,” Biffle said. “Because anything can happen. There's a lot of pressure on the 48 team right now because of what happened last week. So he still has a fairly significant lead, but there's a lot of pressure on him, and Mark runs very well at these last two racetracks and so do a few of the other guys out there.
So I think anything can happen. I still feel like anything can happen.”
For Biffle though it’s all about winning races and getting ready for 2010. In the next two weeks starting with this weekends stop in Phoenix, Biffle hopes to win his first race of the season.
"Phoenix is definitely one of my favorite tracks,” Biffle said. “We've been spending this week going over all of our notes from the spring race there to try to make sure we don't miss anything for this weekend.”
In the spring here at Phoenix, Biffle ran in the top 10 for the majority of the race and was able to pick up four positions after the final restart with six laps remaining for a top-five finish. That spring finish gives Biffle three top-five finishes and four top-10 finishes in 11 starts.
Crew chief Greg Erwin said the keys to running well at the tight confines of Phoenix are tire management and track position and he plans on taking a car that he hopes will keep his driver up front.
"We're taking the car that we've started calling our 'concrete car' to Phoenix this weekend,” Erwin said. “We've finished in the top 10 with it every time we've run it this year other than when we had an engine failure at the first Bristol race. Phoenix is a track that Biffle really likes and he runs well there.”
Biffle needs a win at Phoenix or Homestead for several reasons. First to avoid going winless in a season, something that hasn’t happened since he began competing fulltime in the Cup series in 2003 and perhaps just as importantly, using the momentum to carry the team into 2010.
“I feel like making The Chase this year was a lot of momentum for the team,” Biffle said. “And this sport is a lot about momentum. Certainly we'd like to win one of these last two races, but we're looking forward to finishing off the season the best we can in the points and then being better next year, being higher up on the points. Get locked in earlier in that Chase and then compete for this title even better than we did this year.”
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