Biffle, McMurray finally the top cars for Roush Fenway

BRISTOL, Tenn. -- Jamie McMurray and Greg Biffle haven't been the headliners they hoped to be in the Roush Fenway Racing garage so far in 2007. With one top-10 between the two entering Sunday's race, they sat 24th and 26th in the point standings, respectively -- the bottom two on the five-car team.

But in the Food City 500 at Bristol Motor Speedway, Biffle and McMurray took center stage, both finishing in the top 10 and posting their highest finishes this season.

Biffle too low

Robin Pemberton, NASCAR's director of competition, announced after Sunday's race that Greg Biffle's No. 16 Ford was too low in post-race inspection and that NASCAR will take the car to its R&D Center.

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"Every week this year we've had a good car, we just got in those two accidents in the beginning [Daytona and California]," said McMurray, who finished the race ninth. "It feels so good walking out here and looking up at the scoreboard.

"You got to take baby steps to get better, and every week we seem to get better."

McMurray started the race fifth and hovered in the top five for most of the race until a brake problem forced the No. 26 team to make some mid-race adjustments.

"The front brakes went away," McMurray said. "I didn't have any front brakes and I got so loose getting in and we were trying to adjust the car to make it better because of the brakes. There's nothing we could do about it.

"At the end we got the brakes better, but the balance was all messed up so we've got to work on that."

With the ninth-place finish, McMurray's first top-10 at Bristol since the fall of 2004, he jumped to 18th in the point standings in trying to reach his first berth in the Chase for the Nextel Cup.

"The Car of Tomorrow [for us] is promising going to Martinsville, so we've got a few things to work on but I still feel good about it right now," he said.

Biffle started 11th and made his way to the top five in the first 200 laps, challenged for the lead a few times before ending up fifth on the day, his fifth top-10 at the track in nine races.

"I had a great, great racecar," Biffle said. "We had great pit stops, everybody just worked really hard. This is what this team is made of. We've had about four of these runs now, but this is the first one we've finished. I feel really good about it."

After the race, however, NASCAR announced that Biffle's car failed post-race inspection because it did not meet minimum height requirements.

"The rear of the car was low. We give a quarter-inch on the low side and the car was out of tolerance," said Robin Pemberton, NASCAR's director of competition. "The No. 16 due to its post-race potential infraction is going back to the R&D Center."

Pemberton said potential penalties may follow, depending on what is discovered at the Research and Development Center in Concord, N.C.

At any rate, Bristol was a huge improvement for the No. 16 team from a week ago at Atlanta, where Biffle finished 41st after being spun by David Reutimann with less than 100 laps to go. The top-five moves Biffle 11 spots up in the point standings to 16th heading to Martinsville, a track where he hasn't been successful. In eight races there, his best finish is 17th.

But for Biffle, he thought he had the car to win Sunday, and some indecision inside the team may have cost him the opportunity to challenge for the victory.

"[Crew chief] Pat [Tryson] called me to take four tires [when the caution came out with 14 laps to go] and I was about a foot past the commitment line and I didn't want to try and chance it," Biffle said. "It's unfortunate because I think we could have won possibly.

"We had a really good car on the short run and the long run, but we'll never know."