Biffle’s gamble pays off

Monday, Feb. 28, 2005 | 9:51 a.m.

FONTANA, Calif. -- Greg Biffle used everything he had -- including all four tires and the Turn 2 wall -- to drive his Roush Racing Ford to victory Sunday in the Auto Club 500 at California Speedway.

Biffle, riding on the same set of tires for the final 45 laps, scooted past teammate Kurt Busch with 22 laps remaining and held off Jimmie Johnson and Busch for his fourth career NASCAR Nextel Cup victory in the second race of the season.

"I got every ounce I could out of that racecar today," said Biffle, who held off Johnson for a two-car-length victory. "When I got around Kurt ... I thought, 'Holy smokes, this thing is really loose out front.' But it worked out. I was driving my buns off; that's all I had."

Biffle extended his lead over Busch in the closing stages of the race, but Busch and Johnson closed in after Biffle scraped the wall in Turn 2. Johnson then took second place from Busch on the final lap.

"I was completely sideways over there coming off of two that one time and lost all my momentum," Biffle said. "Kurt and all the guys closed in probably 20 car lengths in that one corner. The next lap, I got up there and right when I got to the wall it started to get sideways on me and I eased up and I could just hear the paint touching the fence.

"It was close, but I was doing everything I could ... and not trying to make a mistakes."

Biffle's predicament did not go unnoticed by Busch, who was in the same situation as Biffle as far as tires after the two elected not to pit during the final caution period in order to maintain their track position.

"I knew our best chance was to break out and to build a lead as quick as we could and run the car at 99 percent and see where the lap times were going to fall down," said Busch, a Las Vegas native. "I knew two tires weren't really going to work and I was hoping those guys (who took two tires) would hold up the guys with four tires.

"At the end, I was starting to catch Biffle again. He was running at a stronger pace, but wearing his stuff out. He actually rubbed the fence off of two and you could smell it. I was going to run him down and then Jimmie was there, so I just ran out of tire and ran out of time."

Busch, the defending Nextel Cup champion, followed his runner-up showing in the Daytona 500 with a third-place finish Sunday and assumed the Nextel Cup points lead going into the March 13 UAW-DaimlerChrysler 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

"I'm happy for our team and what Greg Biffle did (but) I'm not happy for what Jimmie did -- he beat me -- but it's a great start for us," Busch said. "We finished second last week and I thought we could get a win today.

"I was looking at two second-place finishes to start the year but if what I have as far as total finishes adds up to five, and you divide that by two, we're doing OK. It's just weird with an off-week coming up, but I'm looking forward to going home to Las Vegas and driving the Sharpie Ford there."

Like Busch, Johnson said he simply ran out of laps in his quest to chase down Biffle.

"The Roush cars and a lot of those guys stayed out there on the last stop," Johnson said. "It worked for them because the four-tire guys got hung up in traffic. If we just had another corner, I think there would have been a different outcome to this race."

Biffle and Busch led a Roush Racing contingent of four drivers in the top 10 Sunday as Carl Edwards finished fifth and Mark Martin took seventh. Matt Kenseth, the fifth Roush Racing driver, finished 26th.

Johnson, who finished fifth at Daytona, moved up to second in points with his runner-up finish Sunday and trails Busch by 5 points. Jamie McMurray (fourth), Kevin Harvick (sixth), Elliott Sadler (eighth), Ryan Newman (ninth) and Rusty Wallace (10th) rounded out the top 10.

Pole-sitter Kyle Busch, Kurt's younger brother, struggled with an ill-handling car and finished 23rd. Daytona 500 winner Jeff Gordon suffered an engine failure late in the race and finished 30th.

Sunday's race was the first to utilize the shorter rear spoilers, NASCAR-mandated gear ratios and new Goodyear tires, but Johnson said the biggest adjustment was overcoming the new gear that limited the cars' revolutions per minute.

"Spoiler-wise, it didn't seem to be as much of a deal as not having the gear that we'd want to run in the car," Johnson said. "The cars definitely have some movement to them in traffic but I had a really good driving car all day long.

"The hardest thing would be going into the turn, rolling inside of someone, and beat them back to the gas. The fact that you're pulling on the steering wheel and making a tighter radius would bog your engine down and you couldn't accelerate up alongside the car that was outside of you.

"That was more frustrating to me, personally, than the aero package."