 | | Greg Biffle led 151 of 325 laps Sunday at Atlanta. Credit: Autostock |
By Lee Montgomery, NASCAR.COM
March 21, 2005
10:38 AM EST (15:38 GMT)
HAMPTON, Ga. -- Probably the only guy at Atlanta Motor Speedway who wasn't smiling for Carl Edwards was his Roush Racing teammate Greg Biffle. Oh, sure, Biffle will likely be happy for Edwards once the sting of Sunday's Golden Corral 500 wears off. But after leading nine times for 151 laps and putting himself in a position to win for the third time in the past five Nextel Cup races, Biffle might be feeling the pain for quite some time. Biffle and Jimmie Johnson dominated Sunday, leading 307 of the 325 laps. But with less than 100 laps to go, Biffle took command, pulling away from Johnson to lead by more than seven seconds. Then Kyle Petty blew an engine to bring out the race's eight caution. From that point, Biffle faced only bad news. He came out of the pits third behind Johnson and Edwards, and with 40 laps to go, one figured Biffle had plenty of time to race for the victory. But time ran out as Biffle was stuck in the wake of Johnson's and Edwards' cars. And all Biffle wanted to do was go somewhere and hide. He darted from his car on pit road, running to the garage and then to the media center to try to get his required post-race interview over as quickly as he could. "It's the worst day of my life," Biffle said. Could you blame him for feeling that way? "We had a great race car, and we were in position to win," Biffle said. "We could beat the 48 car for sure, and Carl got up there and blocked enough air. With two race cars in front of me, I couldn't do nothing. "I felt like I could beat the 48. I'm pretty confident I could beat the 48, but I couldn't beat Carl. I mean, I didn't plan on him being there, so that's the way it goes." What got him back to third was a slower-than-normal pit stop, of all things. Biffle's No. 16 team consistently won the battle on pit road Sunday, but when it counted, they got beat. "It was just the race off pit road," Biffle said. "Man, I was so excited. My guys -- you watched the broadcast. I don't know if they had us going down pit road on TV, but I'd beat them out of the pits by 20 car lengths on every stop. And then the second-to-last stop, the 48 beat us, and the last stop the 48 and 99 beat us. That's the way racing is." And once Biffle was in the dirty air, he was cooked. "I made a run at them early and got tight coming off the corner two or three times," Biffle said. "To have the front wheels turned pretty hard -- I just burned the right-front off of it after four laps, and I was finished." No matter how hard he tried, Biffle couldn't get closer to Johnson and Edwards. Maybe he even tried too hard, but Biffle is a charger, not one to settle for anything. "I mean, these cars get so aero-tight that it's terrible," Biffle said. "I just got too tight behind those two cars there at the end and couldn't nothing. If I would have known coming into the pits I as going to leave third, then maybe I would have made an adjustment, but you just never know how you're going to end up on the racetrack, so that's what got us." Moving to second in the points after Sunday's third-place was of little consolation to Biffle. Maybe that's because winners hate to lose, and Biffle appears to be a winner. Blame it on that darn aero-push. "These cars are just so poor in traffic," Biffle said. "It's unbelievable. It's really tough and hard to explain, but they're hard to race. I mean, they're not hard to race, but they don't make a lot of downforce now. "When you're behind other cars, they just won't turn at all. With two cars in front of me, they were just blocking too much air." And blocked his way to Victory Lane. | 
