KANSAS CITY, Kan. -- He's the defending champion of the event. He's best on 1.5-mile intermediate tracks. He's coming off a strong test earlier this week at Lowe's Motor Speedway. And he's won the past two races on the Sprint Cup schedule.

Greg Biffle likes his chances. "I don't want to predict," he said at Kansas Speedway, site of Sunday's Camping World RV 400. "But I think they're good."

And why wouldn't he? He's already defied the odds, storming from the middle of the Chase pack to pull within 10 points of series leader Carl Edwards, and becoming the first driver to sweep the first two events in NASCAR's 10-race playoff. Now he goes for what just a few weeks ago would have seemed an unthinkable three in a row, aiming to become the first Sprint Cup driver to pull off a hat trick since Jimmie Johnson won four in a row near the end of last season.

Everything sets up for him nicely. Biffle's victory last year at Kansas -- which came amid controversial circumstances with the No. 16 car actually crossing the finish line fourth under caution because of low fuel -- provided something of a glimpse of what was to come this year, when he returned to the Chase after a two-year absence. He's backed it up this weekend, rebounding from an 18th-place qualifying effort on Friday to place second in Saturday's first practice and first in Happy Hour, with a top lap of 167.385 mph.

"I like our opportunity to be able to win here," Biffle said. "Certainly, the team's got a lot of confidence. A lot of things are in our favor -- we won here, we run good on mile-and-a-halfs, and we're coming off two wins. Odds are probably not in our favor, three in a row, but we don't have to win every one to win the title. We know that as well."

So what's clicked? Biffle's victory at New Hampshire two weeks ago was his first in 33 race weekends, dating back to the Kansas win last year. A revamped pit crew has dramatically improved the No. 16 team's pit stops, giving the driver more confidence. The breaks -- like staying out on low fuel at New Hampshire -- have gone their way as well.

"I think it's all of it," Biffle said. "I think what you see is, 26 week's worth of hard work has paid off. We've worked very hard for 26 weeks on pit road, pit stops, getting our cars right, making our cars better, making our engines better, driving better on the racetrack, executing better. Me being focused better, not making mistakes. All that has finally materialized all at one time."

Call it peaking at the right time. Biffle is especially strong on intermediate tracks, five of which are in the Chase. The other competitors realize that. "They're a dangerous team," Jeff Burton said.

"Every year somebody, I don't want to say comes out of the woods, but surprises people and puts themselves in a position to win when nobody picked them," he added. "That's what they've done this year. Whether they can do it for eight more weeks or not, I don't know. They could, they look really strong. There's five 1.5-mile tracks coming up. That's where I think the 16 has been their best, at the big racetracks. But there are a lot of variables."

But Biffle has been here before, narrowly missing out on a championship in 2005. He finished 35 points behind Tony Stewart that year, and spent a lot of time ruing the loose lug nuts that had doomed him to a 20th-place finish at Texas Motor Speedway in the year's third-to-last event. This is his first Chase appearance since that season, when he led the series with six victories.

"In some ways I'm surprised, and in other ways I'm not," Johnson said, when asked about Biffle's sudden rise. "Greg has been so solid through the Truck Series and the [Nationwide] Series, and I've always looked up to his hard-nosed driving and aggression on track and getting everything he can out of a car. The last two years have been more of a shock to me that he hasn't been in contention, than seeing him where he is right now. I think in '05 he won the most races in that season, and we thought going into '06 he was going to be the guy, and he wasn't around. So, I was more shocked by that than what I see now. We all know that Roush has the equipment. Once you get all the right people together and they get some time together, it's hard to stop them."

For Biffle, there's no playing it safe, even this close to the lead with eight races to go. His team is "on kill every week right now," he said. "I feel like we don't have anything to lose. I felt like that starting out, I still feel like that. This is our opportunity to gain."

To the competition, those are frightening words.