Greg Biffle not happy with losing Texas 500 -- "We had the fastest car"

  

  
Greg Biffle had his moments in Sunday's Texas Samsung 500....just not at the end (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)

  

    By Mike Mulhern
    mikemulhern.net

    FORT WORTH, Texas
    Greg Biffle was despondent after falling short in Sunday's Texas 500.
   "I had the fastest car…but the fastest car doesn't always win," Biffle said, complaining about two crucial slow pit stops for loose lug nuts falling off the wheels, which put him in a hole.
   "It's difficult when you start 12th or 13th, because you're really 26th, with all the inside traffic.
   "But we worked our way all the way to third. We could have passed Jimmie Johnson in another 15 laps….and in a couple more laps we could have caught and passed Jeff Gordon.
   "We just ran out of time."
   The situation was similar to what happened to Biffle at California, where a bad pit stop – he overshot his mark by a foot and stopped on the air hose – cost him a win too.
   "I just wish I'd had the opportunity to race Jeff for the win," Biffle said. "If we'd had a caution in the last 10 laps, to bunch the field, there would have been a heck of a shootout.
   "Our car handled extremely well, though I probably needed a little more work to get through traffic.
   "At California we had an extremely fast car…and I screwed that up.
   "This time, we had lug nuts fall off. I know they were borrowed tires; but I would have set up with my own stuff.
   "Nope, it's not bad luck. You make your own luck."
   Biffle's two DNFs have left him 15th in the standings (the top-12 after Richmond in late summer make the playoffs).
   Despite Gordon's long losing streak, Biffle said he never doubted Gordon would be making a good comeback. "The guy is a phenomenal driver," Biffle said. "He knows what his car needs to feel like; there are about 10 of us who do.
   "But it's still a tough deal to get the car right. We got ours right today, but maybe we won't at Phoenix next."

   Jimmie Johnson, who rallied from a very slow start to finish second, just a few lengths back, took a pragmatic approach to the question of how would he really have felt if he'd indeed caught Gordon and passed him for the win – thus extending Gordon's long losing streak.
   How cold does a driver have to be in this business?
    "As a friend I would have felt bad….but as a competitor you want to break the momentum anyone has, and Jeff is leading the points," Johnson said. "But if I could have beaten Jeff here, it would have helped me for the next couple of months.
  "But as a friend, I'm happy for Jeff."
   Indeed Gordon is in strong position atop the standings, with five top-fives and six top-10s in the year's seven events. He's got a sizeable 162-point cushion over the man in second…who happens to be Johnson – in a car partly owned by Gordon himself.
   "I'm very proud of the composure we all showed today, in working through the handling problems," Johnson said. "We finally realized that the track wasn't going to come to us, and that we'd have to go to work on the car. The car felt so good in Saturday practice, we'll have to sit down analyze what changed for us.
   "At the end I was chipping away at his lead those last 28 laps….but I'm glad Jeff finally got his win."
   The win was a big factor throughout the day, with heavy gusts pushing the cars around the track and making drivers skittish.
   "Going down the backstraight it would feel like something was going wrong with the engine – the car was slow down and then pick up…You could really feel the wind in turns one and two," Johnson said. "The wind was very noticeable."
  
  

  
Jimmie Johnson gets ready to rumble (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)