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Momentum: Biffle has it, Busch doesn't
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Published: September 28, 2008
KANSAS CITY, Kan. - If Greg Biffle and Greg Erwin, his crew chief, can make it three in a row in today's Camping World RV 400 -- and, hey, they won this race last fall -- they could start to blow the NASCAR Chase for the Sprint Cup wide open.
Kyle Busch is deep in the standings, after bad weekends at Loudon, N.H., and Dover, Del. He dominated the regular season with eight wins, but he'll have to mount a record-setting charge to get back in contention now. He's 12th, and passing all 11 title challengers is going to be a tough deal.
Busch's misfortune is another example of the problems with NASCAR's Chase format. From February though early September, there was little question that Busch and crew chief Steve Addington were the class of stock-car racing. Only Carl Edwards could do much with them.
Then Jimmie Johnson started a comeback of his own a few weeks ago.
But until the Loudon race, Busch was clearly the man to beat for the title.
And it's a shame that the tour's best driver and best team this season are all but out of championship contention for these final two months.
But eight races remain, and that's a long, long way from here to Homestead. Busch could yet get back in it. But it's going to be a long shot.
But Busch is one of the most dangerous drivers on the tour, and he could pull off four in a row, as Johnson did last year to fight back into the Chase.
And having to bill Busch as the underdog now, well, that is certainly unexpected.
Whatever happens from this point, for Busch this has been his finest year. He's proven his talents at the wheel, and he's done an excellent job of creating a new persona (although the old one sometimes returns to haunt, as it did last week at Loudon).
And Busch has come to see his place in this sport: "I could say the exact same thing as Dale Earnhardt Jr., and the way I bring it off is going to be the exact wrong way they want to hear it.
"It is what it is.
"If they say I gave up on my team, then that's great -- because my team here knows I haven't given up on them. They haven't given up on me either.
"It's just a product of the beast -- you're racing every single weekend, and going 36 races each year, you've got to make all 36 of them worth it.
"So you just remember that you've had a hell of a season to this point.
"Maybe we were trying too hard, and the luck hasn't quite gone our way … but honestly I don't know what you do, I don't know what to change.
"We haven't changed anything this whole year. So whatever just happened has been a product of bad luck."
The new favorites
At the moment, the title game is Biffle vs. Edwards vs. Johnson. Those three are at the top of the standings, and they're running so strong; their battling at Dover was breathtaking to behold, particularly with so much on the line -- the rest of the pack doesn't appear to have much chance of even staying close to them, much less kicking out front.
This track, Kansas Speedway -- west of town, in a field that only a few years ago was deserted farmland but that now is bustling with big Cats everywhere chopping and dicing for new shops, including a mega-Hard Rock casino coming -- could tell the tale of the championship Chase. Because this is the first of five intermediate-sized 1½-mile tracks down the stretch. Charlotte, Atlanta, Texas and Homestead are looming, and if a man can't handle this place, he'll probably have trouble too at those four.
How will Biffle handle the third race of the Chase, after winning the first two? Will he keep going wide open, or will he try to stand pat for a week or two and see if his rivals falter or break, as Busch and Denny Hamlin already have?
"I don't want to say I want to win more (now), but I'm more focused on how we can keep it going, more than reflecting on what we've been able to do so far," Biffle said. "I'm focusing on the first three. I don't want to sound arrogant, but that's really what I'm concentrating on --winning here."
And Biffle said he believes in the power of momentum. "Absolutely.
"And we won here last year, we're good on 1½-mile tracks, and we had a great Charlotte test.
"Man, I feel good about it."
One point to make -- this 1½-miler is no cookie-cutter track.
"This is a dissimilar track, more like the old Las Vegas maybe," Biffle said. "It drives a lot flatter.
"Most 1½-miles we go to have more banking, or drive like they have more banking.
"This track drives like it's flatter."
And this track tends to play to drivers and teams that get good gas mileage. Last fall's 400 was a gas-mileage race, and, with the rain, and the red flag and all that controversy, it was one of the most wacky races of the year.
So what quirks may happen Sunday?
The dark horse
And what about Matt Kenseth? Brilliant at Dover, after a bad hit at Loudon, and having a fairly mediocre season already, can he fight back into the hunt? Kenseth might be the best dark-horse pick.
"We needed a good finish," Kenseth said of his "almost" win at Dover. "Obviously I don't want to say ‘Out of it,' but we got a big blow at Loudon.
"We just need to start doing what we did last week -- lead laps and be in contention.
"We're two weeks into this deal, and there are good tracks and bad tracks for drivers and teams; and it seems like our organization, with this car, has been really good at Dover and the 1½-miles with higher-banked tracks. We've struggled at the flat tracks. But Greg and Carl ran so good at Loudon, and that's usually been a bad track for us.
"So it feels like it's going better. Last week we performed really well, and as a group we all performed really well. (Including Jamie McMurray, until he was knocked out in a crash.)
"So that gives us hope."
Of course the real wild card this season has been the winged car. It's a knife-edged machine: If you can get up on that edge, you're fine; if you can't, you're history. Very few teams have come up with the right combination. The tricks aren't secret -- Jeff Gordon knows exactly what Johnson has, and Kenseth knows just what Edwards and Biffle have. But what works for one driver simply doesn't work for another.
And NASCAR has refused all season to allow any tweaking, in one of the most baffling non-moves that NASCAR has shown in many years. Typically if something doesn't work, NASCAR is willing to go to Plan B or Plan C.
This time, despite howls all season from drivers and crews, NASCAR executives have turned a deaf ear.
Teams are testing more than they've ever tested (so much for the cost effectiveness of the winged car), and Goodyear has struggled to come up with the correct right-side tires for the car, which has a higher center of gravity and thus puts more pressure on the right sides.
"It'll make it a little bit better with testing," Kenseth said. "But on the other hand we can't change anything on the body, and aerodynamically we're stuck with what we have. So if there's an aero deficiency, and we can't pass as good as we used to, or get up behind somebody, we can't fix that.
"But the areas we are allowed to work on, we're trying to fine-tune to make it better, and I think we're improving.
"Goodyear can also help us a lot with the tire -- when they get a little racier, or softer tire, it seems to make the racing better. Like last week they probably brought a little softer tire, a little faster tire, and I thought the racing was better.
"Hopefully we can continue down that path."
■ Mike Mulhern can be reached at mmulhern@wsjournal.com.
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