DOVER, Del. -- Greg Biffle got out of his car, soaked in his driver's suit and eyes beaming wide-open. But his voice dragged. He was tired.

If his second consecutive top-five finish -- not counting a runner-up in the All-Star Race -- was such an accomplishment, Biffle struggled to show it Sunday night at Dover International Speedway when he came home in third place.

Best Buy 400

Official Results

Pos.	Driver	Make
1.	Kyle Busch	Toyota
2.	Carl Edwards	Ford
3.	Greg Biffle	Ford
4.	Matt Kenseth	Ford
5.	Jeff Gordon	Chevrolet
6.	Martin Truex Jr.	Chevrolet
7.	Jimmie Johnson	Chevrolet
8.	Jeff Burton	Chevrolet
9.	Dave Blaney	Toyota
10.	Jamie McMurray	Ford

• Results | Points | Lap-by-Lap
• Race Video | Photo Gallery

Biffle appeared poised to chase down his first victory of the season after starting from the pole in the Best Buy 400 and easily having the dominant car early in the race. Of the first 170 laps, Biffle led 164 of them. He was passed on Lap 170 by Carl Edwards, the first time anybody was able to move around Biffle's No. 16 Ford all afternoon.

The reason: an alternator problem.

Biffle initially radioed to his crew that his engine was blowing. Oil pressure began to drop. The motor sputtered at the end of each straightaway. Biffle began flipping switches and turning off non-essential items. Finally, with Edwards catching him, he moved up out of the way and gave up the lead. Only then did his team discover it was the alternator. He switched batteries and kept going, although he still was forced to leave the cooling fans off inside his machine.

"I had an awful pain in my stomach from not having any oxygen inside the car," said Biffle, whose strong performance adds to a pair of second-place finishes in an exhibition event and the Coca-Cola 600. "I opened my visor up and there's dust and dirt flying around, stuff going in my eyes. So I shut my visor down. If anybody's ever had a helmet on with a visor down -- we've got a chin flap that seals it off and there's just no air in there to breathe. So I panted inside that thing for 300 laps and it just wore me out."

The on-track results didn't show it. Biffle never fell below eighth, and that was simply due to green-flag pit stops shuffling the running order. Otherwise, he held steady inside the top three.

It was, however, on-track racing that frustrated Biffle much more than not having his air conditioning unit.

As Edwards and Biffle were running second and third, respectively, and trying to chase down eventual winner Kyle Busch, lapped traffic anchored any progress either driver could make. And it included one of their Roush Fenway Racing teammates as lapped cars of Jamie McMurray and Jeff Burton raced for eighth position and to be the first car one lap down.

Biffle said he didn't mind that situation as much as he did when cars run by themselves despite being multiple laps down.

"The thing is it's a delicate situation to talk about," Biffle said. "You can't say, 'Get out of my way, you can't race.' Although that's what Tony Stewart a lot of times does -- he doesn't put up with guys not getting out of his way when he's got a faster racecar, and he'll let you know it."

Biffle said a large problem is the continued battle teams face while trying to figure out a better way of navigating traffic in the new car.

"This car is so difficult, when you get 10 or 15 cars away from a guy it just stops, you can't get any closer," Biffle said. "It's not like you can get up, put some air on his bumper and move him out of the way. Carl and I spent 10 laps, eight laps behind one of our teammate cars and lost a tremendous amount of track position. That's where he lost all of his track position to the 18 car, I saw it happen. I was on Carl's bumper, and when I got by him, Carl was almost a straightaway ahead of me -- almost a straightaway.

"You just can't get to the guy's bumper, or I would have jacked his tires off the ground and sent him into the fence backwards. I would have done it in a second, but I just couldn't get there."

From that point, Biffle said, any shot at catching Edwards for second place was an afterthought.

Busch went through the same problem, only it was when he was trailing Biffle.

"He would pull away because he had fresh air," Busch said. "Myself, I couldn't really hold onto it. Once you get up into their wake, the car doesn't feel as secure, doesn't feel as comfortable without having the air going over it, the little amount of air that does go over it. So you know, it's kind of frustrating when you can't gain on somebody."

The way Busch did gain on Biffle was from a fast pit stop that put him in front of the 99 and 16 cars.

It was a frustrating moment for Biffle despite the top-five finish, his fifth of the season. The strong run, combined with an abundance of early-race attrition that involved four drivers inside the top 12 in points, moved Biffle up six spots in the Sprint Cup standings. He's now in fifth, 392 points behind leader Busch.

"Our team has been building really, really fast racecars," Biffle said. "We had a really, really fast car at Darlington. Then we came at Charlotte and had two really good cars. Then we came here and sat on the pole and had a great car the whole race.

"I really feel like we've sort of turned the corner and we're super competitive. Now we just need to get all the gremlins out of there that keep us from finishing good every week. It was pretty tough. It was a long day for us. We finished third and it's what we needed to do for points."