Don't call him a darkhorse, Biffle in Chase to win Chase

LOUDON, N.H. -- It came with 12 laps to go on a day seemingly reserved for someone else who made a whole lot more sense.

Two-time defending points champion Jimmie Johnson, coming off back-to-back race victories, had led more laps than anyone else and appeared to be comfortably in front of his closest pursuer in Sunday's Sylvania 300 at New Hampshire Motor Speedway.

Greg Biffle, who had been stalking Johnson's No. 48 Chevrolet in his own No. 16 Ford fielded by Roush Fenway Racing, knew better. Biffle was certain he had something for Johnson, and with 12 to go he finally gave it to him -- passing him smoothly and swiftly between Turns 3 and 4 on the 1.058-mile track (watch video).

"I don't want to brag, but it was a textbook pass," Biffle said later. "I got in the corner good. I got after the throttle early. I got close enough to him that I got a little bit of air off the back of his car, or he got to the gas a little fast because he saw me there.

"As soon as I got the opportunity to have a little run, I got my nose inside of him, got him a little loose. This nose pushes a lot of air out the side. So I got some side force on his bumper. Then he was loose in that gray [stuff at the top of the track] coming off the corner, and couldn't get the gas down. That gave me the run down the straightaway to clear him."

Go ahead, Greg. Brag.

You deserve to do whatever you want after sweeping to victory in the opening race of the 2008 Chase and giving NASCAR precisely what it needed at exactly the right moment -- a fresh face in Victory Lane.

In a season that had been dominated by three drivers, Johnson among them, this is what the Chase required to make it more interesting for all of the competitors and the fans. It was Biffle's first win of the season -- his first in 33 races, to be exact -- but it vaulted him to third in the points behind Roush Fenway teammate Carl Edwards, who has six wins and was ecstatic to finish third in what he considered a sub-par car Sunday; and Johnson, who has four wins and had to resign himself to second Sunday.

Much the same way as Clint Bowyer last season, when Bowyer was the last driver to clinch a spot in the Chase but then won the Chase opener at New Hampshire to put himself in the thick of the title hunt, Biffle took advantage of the system and now is looking to build on it.

Mixing it up

There will be those who cry foul about Kyle Busch's free-fall in the standings. A mechanical issue -- a broken heim joint -- sent him backward with frightening velocity in the race and he never recovered, eventually finishing 34th only because of some late-race attrition to other cars that actually ran better than him most of the day.

That dropped Busch like a rock from first to eighth in the points standings, 74 behind Edwards and Johnson (with Edwards technically in first because he owns the tiebreaker over Johnson by virtue of his two more race victories on the season). Eight is the number of series-high race wins Busch has this season, but it was no number to celebrate Sunday night after he childishly stormed from the track without offering any explanation for what went wrong.

Successful swap

Roush Fenway took some veteran over-the-wall crew guys from Jamie McMurray's team and put them onto Greg Biffle's and Carl Edwards' squad. The move paid off as Biffle had some of his best pit stops all season leading to a New Hampshire victory.

• Complete story, click here
• Biffle takes Race No. 1
• Video: The Biff in Victory Lane
• Video: Post-race conference

Losing every bit of advantage he had spent the previous seven months building in one afternoon was disconcerting, to be sure. But the good news for Busch is that he still has nine races to gain it back.

This is the playoffs, remember? You are supposed to bring your best. Busch's No. 18 team didn't do it Sunday, and paid a price -- but not as dear a price as some NFL teams who lay an egg on one afternoon in the first round of their playoffs. At least Busch gets not only a second chance to make it right, but nine more such opportunities.

Biffle, meanwhile, served up a solid reminder of why the Chase was introduced in the first place. It is supposed to make these last 10 races of the season more meaningful; it is supposed to generate excitement. And more than anything, it is supposed to give each of the 12 guys who drove well enough in the first 26 races of "the regular season" a legitimate chance to chase down a championship.

Entering Sunday's race, Biffle was seeded ninth of those 12 guys. He seized the opportunity to improve his standing. It was there for the taking for all 12 teams in the Chase.

"I just thought about what I need to do for the next 10 weeks," Biffle said. "I've thought over and over about it. Just get the car right on Friday and Saturday, and drive the best race I can on Sunday. The best man's going to win at the end of the 10 weeks."

Make your own luck

If it seems Biffle came out of nowhere to jump into the middle of this hunt for a title, that's not quite true. He had registered eight top-five finishes prior to Sunday, including a second at Fontana two weeks earlier. He challenged for victories at several other events earlier this season, only to fail for a variety of reasons to get to Victory Lane.

But this is a guy who doesn't like to make excuses for any shortcomings of the No. 16 team.

"I think sometimes you often wonder why things happen or go wrong when they do," Biffle said. "But I think a lot of times you create your own luck. You know, it's not luck when you have a bad pit stop or you have something else go wrong. That's not bad luck; you just didn't do it right. When I spun out and got up in the fence at Richmond last week, it wasn't bad luck. That was an error on my part."

He said he has never felt better prepared, physically or mentally, than he does at this moment heading into the final nine races of this season. And he seems to have that swagger, that fire in his eyes, necessary to make a serious run at becoming his sport's top champion. Plus he likes where his team is headed -- literally as well as figuratively.

"I felt like we would be a definite threat in the Chase if we made it, because of the momentum we've had and because of how good the racetracks in the Chase are for me," Biffle said. "Dover, Homestead we've won at ... Texas, Kansas. There are just a bunch of great racetracks for us in the Chase.

"There are some that I was a little nervous about. One was Loudon, and the other two are Martinsville and Talladega. We've gotten through the one a little better than I expected, which was here. So I feel like we're definitely the dark horse in this thing, like a couple people [in the media] said we would be."

He might be more than that now.

"I didn't feel like the dark horse [coming in]. They named me that. They named me The Biff, and then they said I was the dark horse," he admitted with a smile. "I don't know what else they're going to call me."

His crew chief, Greg Erwin, knew the right answer.

"Winner," Erwin said.

The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer