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."

And Biffle, who finished third in the Daytona 500 and was leading with six laps remaining, is certainly glad to be here.

"It's slick -- it seems like the old slip and slide is out there," said Biffle, who won his first career Cup race in this event in 2003. "The car drives pretty good. This is my [Daytona] 500 car we brought back. It ran good in the 500, obviously, so we figured we can improve on it a little bit here and make it a little bit better.

"I think [the new plate] is tremendously faster. I didn't look at the lap time exactly, but [crew chief Greg] Erwin told me it was about a second faster. You can kind of feel the sensation of speed inside the car that we're running a little bit faster.

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"Faster when you're racing is kind of always better, but that's not always the case. That's pretty fast for July. July isn't usually quite as fast as February."

Biffle and Kenseth both said the conditions, and the larger plate, might be better for the fans, and certainly more interesting for the competitors.

"The cars are a handful, but I like that -- I love that," Kenseth said. "You kind of knew it would be, with the big plate and we're going pretty fast, and with the pavement wore out -- which is what makes Daytona great, in my opinion.

"I mean, you run real fast on new tires and you're able to pass, and I think having tires and having your car handling is gonna be way more important than probably drafting and being quite as much at the mercy of other drivers and being in the right group -- if we can get some long runs.

"I look forward to that. It's gonna be fun. This is probably, depending on what they use for asphalt when they repave it, this might be the last time we ever race here, in my career anyway, in these kinds of conditions. I'm looking forward to it. It's gonna be slick and sliding around a lot, and it's gonna be fun."

"What it's gonna do is give the car more acceleration," Biffle said.

"We're all gonna run down in the corner two- or three-wide, bunched up, and after we get about 10 laps on our tires -- usually after about three laps here everybody is coming out of the gas. But what's gonna happen is everybody is gonna be coming out of the gas because their car is slipping and sliding.

"But when you go back to the gas it's gonna have a lot more acceleration, so I think you're gonna be able to complete passes easier with that extra power. If the guy beside you can't get the gas down because he's sliding or he's a little loose or tight -- whatever the case is -- and you can get the gas down, I think the better handling cars are gonna have more of an advantage with that bigger plate because they're gonna be able to put the gas down and accelerate away from the guy they're racing with."

Kenseth, the 2009 Daytona 500 winner, agreed.

"I will say that it seemed like it didn't take long into the run where most people had to start letting off the gas, and handling is gonna be really important," Kenseth said. "If you didn't start letting off the gas and you're trying to make moves in the middle or do certain things, I saw a lot of out of control cars out there at certain times that were ready to wreck, but I think that's great.

"That's what racing is -- to try and drive your car faster through the corner than everybody else. When they repave it, and how Talladega is now, anybody can drive that. You can hold it wide-open all day and never slip a tire and never do anything, so I enjoy the challenge of running down the straightaway and looking forward to the next corner and hoping you're gonna make it through and figure out how to negotiate through there the best you can. I think that's fun."

And being competitive again, even for a weekend, is a big relief to Kenseth. It was beginning to rain when he made his qualifying lap Friday and he was 10th of 12 cars that ran, when the session was rained out for the second consecutive year and third time in four years. Thus, Kenseth starts seventh and Biffle, 10th.

"I've been racing to stay on the lead lap and to try to get the best finish we can and trying to cling to a spot in the top 12 to try and get into the Chase, while we're trying to improve our program," Kenseth said. "So that's a lot different than racing aggressive for a win or that type of thing.

"It's way different when you get in the middle of the pack. You don't have the luxury of having a lot of room to let other people go and get out of their way and then catch back up to them later.

"You're pretty much racing your guts out every lap to keep every position that you can and usually aggravating the faster cars at the same time because you are kind of in the way. That's kind of where we've been lately."

Kyle Busch was one of those who had to go to a backup, but through a smile, gave the pre-race -- and pre-repave -- a final postscript.

"It is really, really slick out there and with this age on the asphalt, you really can't get a hold of it," Busch said. "It will be nice to repave it. I like the bumps. I like the character it gives this place, but to try to race around here, like us idiots do at 200 mph -- it's hard enough as it is."