Harvick, Biffle take comfort after huge jump in points

JOLIET, Ill. -- With only seven races left before the Chase for the Sprint Cup Series championship commences, nights like the ones posted Saturday by the likes of Kevin Harvick and Greg Biffle are golden.

Both drivers moved up four spots in the standings by virtue of strong runs in the LifeLock.com 400 at Chicagoland Speedway. Biffle moved from 11th to seventh, while Harvick, who entered the evening two points out of the 12th spot that represents the cutoff for those eligible for the Chase, moved from 13th all the way up to ninth.

Harvick finished third behind race winner Kyle Busch and second-place finisher Jimmie Johnson, and briefly thought those two might get together at the end and open the door for him to post what would have been his first victory of the season.

LifeLock.com 400

Official Results

Pos.	Driver	Make
1.	Kyle Busch	Toyota
2.	Jimmie Johnson	Chevrolet
3.	Kevin Harvick	Chevrolet
4.	Greg Biffle	Ford
5.	Tony Stewart	Toyota
6.	Brian Vickers	Toyota
7.	Matt Kenseth	Ford
8.	David Ragan	Ford
9.	Martin Truex Jr.	Chevrolet
10.	Ryan Newman	Dodge

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"I thought I was in a pretty good spot, to tell you the truth," Harvick said. "I thought we might sneak one through there. ... We don't ever give up. In those situations, it's easy to kind of, you know, get loose underneath somebody or have something happen, so you just go as hard as you can."

In the end, he was happy to claim third -- his best finish since a second-place run at Bristol in the fifth race of the season on March 16. He had registered only one top-10 in his previous 13 races.

"We had a good car all night," Harvick said. "We've kind of struggled for the last few weeks with good cars where we just haven't quite finished where we've run all night. [Saturday] we finally got everything going in the right direction and finished it out.

"Hopefully we can gain some momentum and keep everything headed in the right direction these next few weeks, heading all the way to the end of the Chase."

Biffle led a strong night overall for Roush Fenway Racing, with his fourth-place finish representing the best of the bunch. Teammates Matt Kenseth (seventh) and David Ragan (eighth) also finished in the top 10, helping make up for the fact that Carl Edwards fell all the way to 32nd when he suffered damage to the front end of his car that forced him to fall one lap behind after leading with just more than 50 laps remaining.

"I'm excited," said Biffle, who led 43 laps -- second-most behind only Busch, who led 165. "With this racecar, you've got to be out front and stay out front. We weren't as good back in traffic as other cars were, like David Reutimann [who finished 14th] and Kevin Harvick. They could pass cars and we couldn't.

"That went for Matt Kenseth, too, for example. He drove by us back there in traffic."

So Biffle's No. 16 team made up for it with clever pit strategy. When others took on four tires and fuel, they opted for two tires and fuel -- and the improved track position that went along with it.

"We took two tires and were gone," Biffle said. "We were just trying to figure out how to stay up front."

They did it well enough to move up significantly in the standings. The big losers in the points battle were Kasey Kahne, whose 15th-place finish dropped him three spots from eighth to 11th; and Denny Hamlin, who had to have an ignition box replaced in his No. 11 Toyota early in the race and finished 40th, four laps off the pace, to fall five spots from seventh to 12th.

Kahne said his car was so bad, he was happy to salvage what he could.

"It wasn't even a 15th-place car, but with tires and things we did at the end [with their own pit strategy], we made it a 15th-place car," he said.

Harvick felt pretty much the same way about his car, figuring he got all he could out of his No. 29 Chevrolet. He just wasn't quite good enough to get in front of Johnson or Busch.

"I really thought we had a shot. We were just a touch off of those two guys for the most of the night and kept ourselves in position," Harvick said. "I felt like we were better than everybody behind us."