CONCORD, North Carolina – In the end Greg Biffle had some pit strategy to help, but the Roush Fenway Racing driver finished second in Sunday’s Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte (N.C.) Motor Speedway, his best finish since Talladega (Ala.) Superspeedway last May.
Even with stretching the gas in his No. 16 Ortho Ford Fusion, Biffle’s team carried speed that allowed him to score just his second top-10 finish of the season, bettering his 10th place finish in the season-opening Daytona 500.
I’m really excited for the team and the organization,” said Biffle. “We’ve been working really, really hard on our cars. It’s been well documented how bad we’ve been running, and so it feels good to if I finished – it was kind of funny, I decided if I finished in the top 10 tonight, I was going to stand on the door top and be all excited and cheer, and I finished second, and I’m not happy.”
Even still disappointed with his first top-five since a second at Talladega nearly a year ago, Biffle didn’t just get lucky Sunday night. The team kept themselves in contention from daylight to darkness hovering inside the top-12 for a majority of the 600-mile event.
“The thing is we ran in the top 10 all night,” added Biffle. “Car was good, had a lot of speed. That was a huge improvement. We haven’t done that in probably a year, so I was super excited about that.
“And then because of that, running where we were running, it gave us the opportunity to try and stretch the fuel window and make it. You know, I was putting a lot of pressure on Carl (Edwards) there. I started going with about 10 laps to go. The crew chief told me save all you can, just stay in front of the 88 (Dale Earnhardt Jr.), and I made a decision that I was going to try and beat Carl. You know, I got pretty close to him there, and then with two to go, the fuel light came on that the fuel pressure was low, and so I came around and had to start pushing the clutch in and shutting it off and coasting and try and preserve what fuel I had to make it back.”
Despite an unplanned meeting with the wall during last Saturday night’s Sprint All-Star race, Biffle salvaged a respectable finish, but more importantly, the Roush Fenway Racing proved that their speed last weekend wasn’t a fluke as almost immediately, Biffle’s car showed speed during practice on Thursday at the 1.5-mile speedway.
It’s been no secret that the Roush Fenway Racing cars have struggled the last year and a half. Tracks, where Roush Fenway Racing stamped a presence in Victory Lane have become all but distant memories. But, Biffle said that his team has worked tirelessly to right the ship and put the once weekly contenders back on the radar screen.
The Vancouver, Washington native, the turnaround is slow, but showing signs of life and its pulse has rhythm heading to Dover’s “Monster Mile” next weekend.
“I think it’s mostly what I know of that we’ve found is really the setup on the race car,” offered Biffle of the progress. “I can’t believe that we’ve missed that for a year, that we haven’t found anything to get our cars to go faster, and then we changed some minor stuff and all of a sudden here we are.
“I’ve got my fingers crossed that we at least with all the simulation and all the things we have, hopefully we can pinpoint what we changed and what made the difference and then continue to try and work in that same direction and then hopefully each racetrack is different, Dover is definitely different, so we’ll see if those changes we’ve made, improvements, will continue on.”
Biffle’s 13th performance in the 600 bolted him two spots in the Sprint Cup Series standings from 21st to 19th entering next weekend’s race at Dover (Del.) International Speedway where the 19-time Cup winner has won twice, most recently in 2008.
“This (Charlotte) is a good racetrack for us,” said Biffle. “I had about a half straightaway lead here a few years ago and then the caution came out and I didn’t have enough gas to make it. Neither did the 88 that day, the 29 ended up winning. But we tested Dover and did an one day test up there, and I’m looking forward to that. I’ve got a couple trophies from there. We run good there. The test didn’t go as good as we’d like it to, but maybe we learned a little bit here that can go along with that test and see if we can challenge run in the top 10 again.”
Follow Chris Knight on Twitter @Knighter01.
