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DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Greg Biffle stood rather proudly alongside his hobbled and taped-up No. 16 Ford on Daytona International Speedway pit road following Saturday night’s Coke Zero 400 Powered by Coca-Cola. It was a night of perseverance for the whole Roush Fenway Racing three-car team, and in the end, everyone was smiling.
Top-10s all around.
2011 Daytona 500 winner Trevor Bayne led the Roush squad with a third-place finish. Fourth-year full-time Sprint Cup Series driver Ricky Stenhouse Jr. was fifth and Biffle’s pole-winning car finished in eighth place.
It’s been two full years since Roush had a top-10 sweep, and watching and listening to the team’s drivers late Saturday night, they seem convinced there is more to come.
“To have a top-three finish today, it’s really a great day for us and a great day for Roush Fenway Racing and Ford,” Bayne said. “For our organization to be on the pole this weekend, to have three cars in the top eight, two in the top-five, I think that’s kind of a landmark for us as an organization with the struggles we’ve had to get all three teams running strong on a weekend like this.”
All the Roush cars were a little bumped and bruised on pit road post-race — a result of the hectic pace and frantic maneuvering so typical of restrictor-plate tracks. But they finished the quest as strongly as they started it.
“We had a really good car,” Biffle said standing next to his banged up Ford EcoBoost-sponsored Fusion. “Two or three cars were definitely faster, but we stayed up front there and just got shuffled out of line there. Lost track position and were just working our way back up and got caught up in that wreck. Accidents happen at these restrictor-plate tracks so we fought our way back up and finished eighth. Pretty impressive for a car damaged this much.
“We’re pretty happy. We definitely wanted to finish better than eighth and we wanted to do it differently than that, but we’re happy.”
It was the first top-10 finish of the season for Biffle, who won his first pole position since 2013.
It was the second top-five of the year for Stenhouse and third top-10 in a season where the former XFINITY Series champ feels genuinely encouraged. Not just about himself, but more importantly about the whole Roush Fenway organization.
“We had a chance to win and Trevor and Greg had a good run as well,” Stenhouse said. “Hopefully before (regular-season finale at) Richmond we can continue to get our cars better and finish up front, maybe win one of these.
“You’ve got to build on any race track it doesn’t matter where you go. We brought fast race cars. The whole shop did a great job of putting fast cars together and we did a good job of not tearing that car up and being able to work on it and bring it back to Talladega. Anytime you’re bringing fast cars to the race track it doesn’t matter if it’s a road course, mile-and-a-half, or superspeedway it builds confidence in the guys that they know what they’re doing and we’re going in the right direction.
“Everyone at the shop works that much harder and Jack (Roush) is a big part of that. He’s at the shop every week making sure everyone is working hard. It’s a fun organization to be a part of right now knowing we’re still making progress. We have a long way to go but it’s fun right now.”