Biffle hopes to avoid going from an underdog to a 'lost dog'

Fourth and 10, two outs bottom of the ninth, white flag; that’s what Greg Biffle’s facing this week.

After two lackluster finishes in the opening rounds of NASCAR Chase for the championship, Biffle finds himself ninth in the standings and facing a make or break situation as NASCAR Sprint Cup Series heads to Kansas Speedway for Sunday’s Price Chopper 400.

Biffle barely made it in to the top-12 cutoff for NASCAR’s ten-race championship making the seeding in the12th spot.

Definitely the underdog, Biffle and his Roush-Fenway Racing team struggled at both Loudon and at last weeks stop at Dover, two races he won the year prior. Despite the mediocre finishes Biffle was able to claw his way up the standings, primarily due to others misfortune and moved up three spots.

Now heading into round three of the 2009 Chase for the Sprint Cup, Biffle is in serious danger of falling out of contention. Ninth in the points isn’t exactly something to cheer about or give Biffle much hope. He’s hanging on in the Chase by his fingernails and one disaster this weekend could easily end Biffle’s hopes in the 2009 Chase.

There’s another streak in danger for Biffle though. Every year since he made his fulltime Sprint Cup series debut in 2003, Biffle has won at least one race. So far this season he’s winless and to finish out the year without a win would no doubt add insult to injury for the Vancouver Washington native.

The last time Biffle had gone this deep in the season without a win was in 2007. He was able to score his first and as it turned out only victory that year at none other then Kansas Speedway.

Kansas has been kind to Biffle. He has four top-five finishes in seven starts with an average finish of 9.9. That gives Biffle an optimistic outlook for this weekend.

“Why we run so good at Kansas, why we're so competitive there - I really can't answer that,” Biffle said. “You know, there are some race tracks that suit our cars and maybe my driving style, or whatnot, a little bit better than others. And, I'm glad they're kind of stacked up in the Chase a little bit, and we're in it. That's a positive for us."

In last season’s race, Biffle struggled with an ill-handling car for the majority of the race, much like he has for the first two races in the Chase. But unlike last week at Dover when an ill-handling Ford left him 13th, in 2008 after several adjustments the handling improved to the point that Biffle was able to pass Jeff Gordon on the last lap for a third-place finish.

That’s a feat that not only would Biffle like to repeat, he absolutely has to in order to have any chance in the Chase.

“We're only lacking in corner speed,” Biffle said. But that is what is keeping us from a win so until we figure that out, it's going to be a battle. Last weekend in Dover looked like we had a solid top-five finish ahead of us and it just didn't work out that way so we really need to figure it out this weekend."

Last week at Dover the crew brought a Ford Fusion that had raced at Pocono earlier in the year. The car the team will be bringing to Kansas this week though has never been raced according to crew chief Greg Erwin.

"We're taking a brand new car to Kansas this weekend,” Erwin said. “It was built with Kansas in mind and it worked out that it was finished in time to take this weekend. Greg has a pretty good record at Kansas and it would be great to get back into victory lane there.”

Erwin added that the keys to success at Kansas are not to treat it like some of the other tracks of the same size.

“Even though Kansas is a mile-and-a-half track, it's pretty unique,” Erin said. “You could say it's a little like Texas but you really have to go there without comparing it to another track.”

Like Biffle, Erwin is hoping for a better out then last week at Dover.

“We were more than disappointed with our run at Dover last weekend,” Erwin admitted. ”A good run at Kansas would be great. The crew keeps giving a consistently outstanding performance in the pits, so if we can just get the cars figured out, we'll be all set."

Biffle, Erwin and the entire crew have worked hard better hope they do get it figure out, because if not Biffle could be going from an underdog to a ‘lost dog’.