Biffle glad to see Richmond in rearview mirror

RICHMOND, Va. -- Considering he had just struggled to a 32nd-place finish, Greg Biffle appeared to be in a remarkably good mood following Saturday's Air Guard 400 at Richmond International Raceway.

Maybe that's because he was glad simply to have survived the wild night. When he was first asked to explain what happened to produce such a disappointing finish, the driver of the No. 16 Ford laughed and initially responded with a question of his own.

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Despite his struggles in the race at Richmond, Greg Biffle likes his chances in the Chase.

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"You got a lot of time?"

Biffle was fortunate that he had clinched a spot in the 12-driver Chase for the Sprint Cup field early in the race when Jason Leffler retired to the garage after 30 laps. Biffle, who needed only to finish 42nd, was in trouble even before the green flag dropped.

"So we're pulling off pit road, and my helmet just fills with smoke," Biffle said. "It completely fills with smoke as we're pulling off pit road and making our parade laps around the track -- and I'm about to die. An electrical fire was all I could smell, and I don't know what's on fire.

"It was something in my helmet blower that caught fire and burnt up. So I open my visor and got that unhooked -- and then the race started."

His troubles were far from over, however.

"When the race started, we were really, really loose in," Biffle said. "We worked and worked and worked on it every chance we got in pit stops -- and then all of a sudden we got really, really tight. I didn't know why for the longest time, and they asked me what the temperature was and I said 170 degrees. We were like, 'What's up with that?'

"We hit a piece of debris at some time or another and knocked a big hole in the upper part of the nose, up on the shelf where they couldn't see it. So we were fighting aero -- and on this short track with the nose being completely open, it's not going to drive worth a damn."

After getting repairs to the nose of his car, he thought he might finally have a chance to get back in the race. He was mistaken.

"Once we got that fixed, we took a wave-around. And as I'm going around on the wave-around, I get a flat right-front tire," he said. "So we pit coming to the green. Well, you have to take the green on the track before you pit. We pit coming to the green and NASCAR penalizes us for it.

"I'm waiting for next week. Let's talk about Loudon."

That's what enabled Biffle to be so good-natured about Richmond, despite all his difficulties. The slate gets wiped virtually clean heading into the Chase. By virtue of the 10 bonus points he earned for his one victory this season, at Pocono, Biffle is only 50 points behind top-seeded Denny Hamlin and 40 behind No. 2-seed Jimmie Johnson heading into the first of 10 Chase races at New Hampshire.

"We're only 40 points behind the leaders right now. So we're excited about that," said Biffle, who is the No. 7 seed. "We won the first two Chase races in '08, so we feel like we can at least get a decent start to the Chase.

"We've got eight-and-a-quarter great race tracks for us in the Chase. Talladega is a crapshoot; Martinsville is like Richmond for me -- sometimes good, sometimes bad. Hopefully, we can have a good day there; we finished 10th there in the spring. We'll just fight like dogs at those places, but other than those we feel like we can run with all these guys everywhere else."

Maybe he'll be able to smoke the field in a different way next time out.

"I've never had that happen like that before," Biffle said of the fire that broke out inside his helmet. "First of all, it about made me sick and I still feel kind of bad after breathing that all night long. It sucks when it goes out on the parade laps -- because you know you've got about four hours of breathing only the air that's inside the car.

"I was nervous whether it was going to continue to burn, because we would have had to come in right away to fix it. But when I shut it down, the fire went out. That's the way it goes sometimes, I guess. It was an eventful night."

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Roush Fenway Racing Chase drivers Matt Kenseth, Carl Edwards and Greg Biffle.

The Chase Drivers

Points Reset / Top Finishes

Pos.	Driver	Points	Wins	Second	Third	Fourth	Fifth
1.	Denny Hamlin	5,060	6	1	0	2	1
2.	Jimmie Johnson	5,050	5	1	3	0	1
3.	Kevin Harvick	5,030	3	3	2	2	1
4.	Kyle Busch	5,030	3	2	2	0	1
5.	Kurt Busch	5,020	2	1	4	1	0
6.	Tony Stewart	5,010	1	3	1	0	2
7.	Greg Biffle	5,010	1	0	2	2	0
8.	Jeff Gordon	5,000	0	2	4	3	1
9.	Carl Edwards	5,000	0	2	2	0	2
10.	Jeff Burton	5,000	0	1	1	2	1
11.	Matt Kenseth	5,000	0	1	1	0	3
12.	Clint Bowyer	5,000	0	0	0	4	0

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