Greg Biffle won last years Fall race at Dover (Photo: Getty Images)
This time last season Greg Biffle was riding a tidal wave of momentum down the Eastern Seaboard from New Hampshire to Dover Delaware.
Biffle started last years Chase in 11th spot, barely making it into NASCAR’s 10-race championship run. He then promptly went out and won the first two races at New Hampshire and Dover. Last year those two winning efforts kept him in contention at the start of the Chase but poor finishes of 10th or worse in five of the eight remaining races doomed his championship run and he finished the season third in the final standings.
For this year’s championship run, Biffle again squeaked in, seeded 12th. Last week at New Hampshire, Biffle struggled early in the going when the team found that the chassis set up on Biffle’s Ford Fusion was taking them backwards instead of towards the front and Biffle found himself falling back past his 22nd place qualifying spot.
Crew chief Greg Erwin ordered wholesale changes on the car though and while Biffle was never in contention for the win, he was able to battle back and salvage a 9th place finish.
More importantly and with some help due to misfortune from some of the other Chase contenders, Biffle was actually able to gain three spots in the point standings to ninth.
Biffle will take that top-10 run from last week and his ninth place in points to Dover International Raceway this weekend for Sunday’s AAA 400 and hope for a better showing.
The super fast one mile concrete oval is known as the Monster Mile and to most it’s tough to master. Not for Biffle however and he has the record to back it up.
When you add last years win to his stats, Biffle has finished in the top three in the last four races at Dover. Overall at Dover Biffle has two wins (2008 and 2005) and six top fives, nine top 10s and one pole in 14 starts, enough to give any driver confidence enough to tame the Monster.
“I will be disappointed if we are not in contention for the win this weekend at Dover,” Biffle said. “We led several laps there in the spring and won this race last year… I was at the shop this week going over our notes from Dover with Greg (Erwin) so we would be ready to hit the ground running as soon as we unload. Dover”
Erwin said the car the team is bringing this week is the same one they used at Pocono.
“I feel confident taking it to Dover,” Erwin said. “We haven’t finished out of the top ten at Dover in the last seven races and we’ve been in the top five the last four times we’ve raced there.”
After starting strong in last years Chase but still losing the Championship, maybe the team is learning that if they can’t score a victory in every single race, the key to winning it all this year will be the kind of slow steady progress Biffle showed during the Loudon race last week.
If not a win at Dover this week then a good consistent run along with mirrored efforts over the course of the next races will no doubt have Biffle surprising a lot of people.
It will all start Sunday at Dover International Raceway.
“We need a good finish there to keep (points leader) Mark Martin in our sights,” Biffle said. “If we can keep gaining a little every week, we’ll be right there in contention for the title at Homestead.”
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