Greg Biffle isn’t packing his bags for NASCAR’s postseason just yet.
“It’s definitely not easy cruising to the Chase right now,” he said. “We know that we’re on the envelope of getting in.”
Right now, that envelope is getting pretty crowded.
The top 12 after the Sept. 6 race at Richmond make the Chase, and Biffle slipped from eighth to 10th in points after finishing 21st in last week’s race at Watkins Glen. While he remains 83 points clear of 13th-place Clint Bowyer, Biffle knows any slip-up could cost him a chance to compete for the Sprint Cup title.
“We’re in that eighth-through-13th class that’s going to fight right down to Richmond unless one of us breaks out, gets a win, a couple of top-fives and locks ourselves in the next two races,” he said.
Biffle may be the best bet to break through. He’s won four times at Michigan’s two-mile oval during his racing career, including twice in the Sprint Cup. It helps that he’s on a team that’s dominated the track over the years. Roush Fenway Racing has 10 Cup victories Michigan, second only to the Wood Brothers’ total of 11.
“We’ve had a legacy of having really fast cars, I think, of having generally pretty good engines and better-than-average luck there,” team owner Jack Roush said.
A little bit of racing luck never hurts, something the Roush Fenway cars have managed to find in bunches at Michigan. Maybe the home cooking helps. Roush Industries has offices in the area, and the boss sets up two hospitality tents for the Sprint races.
Whatever the reason, trips to victory lane have become commonplace for Roush Fenway cars over the years at the track whose banking makes for wide-open racing. Biffle sure seems to like it. He won at Michigan the first time he raced there in the Craftsman Truck Series, and has six top-10s there as a Sprint Cup driver.
“The thing I love about Michigan is you can race as hard as you want,” Biffle said. “You can go two-and-three wide on that downforce racetrack for the win and be able to do that in a cautious manner where you’re going to get a good finish.”
A good finish eluded Biffle during the series’ first visit to the track this season, when he was 20th in a race won by Dale Earnhardt Jr., a rare off day for a team that’s had few of them at the home of Ford.
While the track allows a driver to pick a line and go, don’t expect to see Biffle riding up along the wall. That’s not his style. Besides, as much as he’d like to win on Sunday, a top-five finish could go just as far in helping him make the Chase.
“To run two feet off the wall at Michigan is, I’d like to say, a dangerous line because one little mistake and it wipes the right side of the car off,” he said. “I intend to stay away from that line.”
Call it good coaching from Roush, who has no doubt about Biffle’s chances of getting into the playoffs if he makes smart choices.
“Greg should certainly be OK given the mix of races we’ve got left,” Roush said. “But man, we’ve got to miss the wreck and we can’t have a part that breaks. … (Who gets in will) be more determined by things gone wrong than it will by blinding speed.”
That might be a good thing for Biffle, who is in danger of going winless for the first time since his rookie year in 2002. He has six top-fives and nine top-10s, but has finished out of the top-10 in six of his last eight races.
Biffle has struggled at times this year, and knows he can’t afford to miss the Chase for a third straight season. It’s a scenario he never envisioned during his breakout year in 2005, when he won six times and finished second behind Tony Stewart in the points race.
“Sometimes it’s short-lived, sometimes it isn’t,” he said. “We won six races in 2005 and it just kind of slips away from your fingers and you don’t ever really know what you did wrong or what happened. Just enjoy it while you can.”
Missing out is not an option this season, and he’s bypassed races on the Nationwide Series to focus on Sprint Cup and the Car of Tomorrow. He’s also spent extra time in the gym trying to keep fit, readying for what he hopes will be a frantic fall.
“I want to be the best I can be and be prepared to give a run at the title,” Biffle said.
It’s a run he hopes gets a little easier come Sunday night.
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