If Greg Biffle and fellow Roush-Fenway Racing teammate Matt Kenseth spent any time talking in the week between New Hampshire and Dover, one thing is for certain; they didn’t talk about what car setup they would each run at Dover.
Sunday in the AAA 400, Kenseth scored a third place finish and ran inside the top five most of the day. Biffle on the other hand struggled the entire day, making only a brief appearance inside the top 10 and finishing 13th.
Kenseth’s third place finish was his best since he won his last race, all the way back in February and while it was good to see Kenseth have a reason to smile, he’s on the outside looking in when it comes to the Chase and if Roush-Fenway Racing wants to win a championship this year Biffle may be their last great hope. And after Sunday’s finish at Dover on the heels of a less then stellar run in New Hampshire, that hope is quickly fading. Biffle is still ahead of Roush Racing’s only other Chase driver Carl Edwards in the points but not by much..jpg)
The only highlight for Biffle, although a dim one, is that he leaves Dover ninth in the standings, the same spot he came in. The Chase however is all about gaining spots and unless Biffle and the No. 16 crew can figure out how to turn their program around in a hurry they will quickly go from Chase hopefuls to Chase ‘also rans’.
For Biffle’s part he placed the blame for his poor performance Sunday squarely on the shoulders of Goodyear and their tire-testing program.
"It was a frustrating day,” Biffle, who was the defending winner of this event, said. ”What’s probably most frustrating about the whole thing, and I hate to beat a dead horse, is that the 42 and the 48 and I don’t know who else came up here and tire tested, and when we came back, look at the guys that didn’t tire test, we ran terrible.”
“It was a completely different tire,” he added. “It had us off our game right when we unloaded off the truck, we couldn’t even make a lap on the track. We got going there toward the end, but not like the guys that tested. That’s the whole deal. We had a decent car, but we’re not going to beat guys that came here and tested."
Last week at New Hampshire, Biffle’s Ford Fusion was terrible at the start of the race but the crew was able to adjust the car during pit stops and give him a fighting chance and a 9th place finish. But Biffle said Sunday at Dover that no amount of adjustments during the race could have helped.
"We were too far off on this tire,” Biffle said. “We needed a different bump stop. We needed to start over, because what we ran here before wasn’t even close."
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Comments
So, I'm wondering who else finished in the Top 5 at the Monster that didn't tire test? I'm sure there were some teams that didn't get the opportunity to test the new Goodyears that performed well Sunday afternoon. I seem to remember in the past the Monster Mile concrete literally chewed up tires. Yesterday's race seemed to prove Goodyear had done better with the concrete tire. Biffle just missed the setup. So did some of the other teams. We probably just need to hang a sign up at all the NASCAR venues that we have hanging at our local dirt track..."No Cry Babies Allowed." Somebody pass Biffle a tissue.
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