DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- Ford's fortunes this season in the Sprint Cup Series have been beyond dismal, but in the face of that, Roush Fenway Racing teammates Greg Biffle and Matt Kenseth are reveling in the challenging mid-summer conditions at Daytona International Speedway.

It's the last race on which anyone will race on the pavement that's been in place since 1978. The 2.5-mile tri-oval will be completely repaved, beginning next week.

Biffle and Kenseth -- the only two Roush Fenway drivers with Daytona wins -- have mostly been happy because, even if it's only for one weekend, Daytona's typically grip-free July pavement has masked their team's Fords' deficiencies that have been apparent at most other venues this season.

Kenseth and Biffle's Fords were the manufacturer's only two cars in the top 10 from Thursday's first, 80-minute practice. All eight Roush Fenway and Richard Petty Motorsports Fords entered in the Coke Zero 400 have the new Ford FR9 engine.

Happy Hour was shortened, first by a multi-car accident on the backstretch and then, while that was being cleaned up, by rain.

While Kenseth ran a limited number of laps in the 53 minutes on-track, leaving him 28th on the Happy Hour time sheet, Biffle was second and one of five Fords in the top 10.

The conditions created a certain amount of mayhem Thursday, as seven teams had to go to backup cars after wrecking the primaries, and a number of other vehicles were wounded. It's nothing new at Daytona, where the temperatures regularly hover at or around 80 degrees.

A larger restrictor plate has picked speeds up by almost 4 mph over last July, and the new spoiler package, while improving downforce, has altered the cars' handling. But greasy is still the word -- and Biffle and Kenseth are loving it.

And that's about time. Kenseth has only two top-10 finishes in his past 10 starts, and those came in the middle of those races, at Dover (third) and Charlotte (10th).

In the same stretch, Biffle has twice as many top-10s, but he's fallen to 10th in the standings. Kenseth, despite being less-than-thrilled with how he's run, remains the top Ford in the standings, in seventh. RFR teammate Carl Edwards is also in a qualified Chase spot, but is on the verge of falling out, in 12th.

"It's as bad as it seems -- there's no doubt we're struggling," Biffle said, before admitting that Daytona eliminated some of that. "There are so many luck factors involved. The cars, when they're on this big race track and they've got a restrictor plate on them, it's less of a factor. Everybody is more so close to the same speed it's just a matter of what lane you're in at what time -- and missing the accidents." (Continued)