Biffle comes up short, but pleased amid rough year

DOVER, Del. -- With the way Greg Biffle's year has gone, you had to wonder if he spent the last few laps of the Dodge Dealers 400 looking in the rear-view mirror to see where the bad luck that has chased him all season would strike next.

It seems like it's been nothing but bad for Biffle and the No. 16 Ford outfit in 2007. Until Sunday, Biffle's best finishes of the season were fifths at Bristol and Infineon.

However, based on Biffle's past performance at the Monster Mile, there was reason to think things might change this weekend. That only grew stronger when he wound up ninth in Friday's qualifying.

Lap-by-Lap

Follow the passes, lead changes and crashes in Carl Edwards' wreck-filled win at Dover.

• Lap-by-Lap, click here
• Race Video, click here

Then a decision to gain track position by taking on two tires during a Lap 84 pit stop put Biffle directly behind leader Kurt Busch -- and he would not fall out of the top five for the rest of the day.

"It was a pretty good day for us," said Biffle, who wound up with a second-place finish. "It wasn't that great early, but we kept working on the car and made some tire-pressure adjustments, wedge and what not, and got it pretty good and was good on long runs."

Running up front did two things for Biffle: It allowed his car to avoid the dreaded dirty air, and he was also able to miss the incidents that wiped out many of the other frontrunners.

In addition, Biffle was able to maintain pace with leader Carl Edwards, allowing him to remain on the lead lap with a handful of other cars as the laps wound down.

On Lap 357, the remaining six lead-lap cars headed for service, assuming they might go green the rest of the way. But on Lap 383 -- following four more yellows -- Biffle and crew chief Greg Erwin gambled on fresh rubber while Edwards and second-place Mark Martin stayed on the track.

It was a calculated gamble that might have worked, had Martin Truex Jr.'s mangled car not brought out another caution.

"We put tires on and I was inside of Mark Martin and the caution came out [on Lap 393]," Biffle said. "So if I had been in front of Mark when that caution came out, I think I might've had a chance to get on the outside of Carl getting in the corner, maybe on the restart, but it wasn't to be."

Biffle did get around Martin on the final restart, but with only four laps left, had nothing for his Roush teammate at the line. Having won at least one race in each of the past four seasons, Biffle would like nothing more than to keep that streak alive with a victory at some point before the end of the year.

"If I could've got to his bumper it might have been a challenge for him," Biffle said. "I know he's in the Chase and he had a little cushion [Sunday], and I needed a win pretty bad, but we were going to race him clean, but I wish I had a chance at him."

All in all, Biffle will take it -- especially the way his 2007 has gone.

"It was a pretty good run for us," Biffle said. "We hadn't been running like this all season, so it's nice to be back running decent again."