Greg Biffle shows a stout Ford...stout enough to win, and that bodes well for Pocono

  A great day for racing, and a good day for Ford and Greg Biffle, here at the head of the pack at the Brickyard (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)
  

   By Mike Mulhern
   mikemulhern.net

   INDIANAPOLIS
   Okay, NOW it looks like we've got Ford back in the game.
   Greg Biffle, strong at Chicago two weeks ago, was strong again here Sunday in Greg Erwin's car, strong enough to win, strong enough even to dominate.
   Biffle, after a late pit stop for four tires cost him track position, wound up third, behind Jamie McMurray and Kevin Harvick. But he'd made his point – his car was the only one strong enough to run with Juan Pablo Montoya throughout the three-hour Brickyard 400.
   Nevertheless Biffle, who is still winless on the tour since the fall of 2008, is frustrated: "I want to win one of these things. We had the fastest car,
but the fastest car doesn't always win."
   The four-tire call was textbook, as strong as he'd run all day. But track position is tricky here at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, where it's extremely hard to pass (though Joey Logano did a yeoman's job, starting dead last and finishing ninth).
   And two tires would likely have been the way to go.
    "It seemed the guy that got out front had a big advantage...and we needed to be out front. I was way faster than Harvick, but just couldn't get by him," Biffle said.
    "We've just got to take some chances to win some of these races, I guess...taking chances with two tires.
    "We thought more guys would do four, but that wasn't the case.
     "We would have won that race if we would have put two tires on, and that's just as simple as it gets. 
     "Four tires are only good for about five laps, and then they start falling off and equalizing with the two-tire cars.
     
  

  Greg Biffle: Maybe Pocono will now be the breakthrough victory, as impressive as he ran Sunday at Indianapolis (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)
  

   "Woulda, shoulda, coulda," Biffle went on. 
       "It's hard when we haven't won in a year and a half....that's pretty hard."
    Biffle certainly couldn't complain about power or handling. "My hat's off to the Roush-Yates engine group. We had some problems with this new engine (it blew up at Chicago), but we came back here and the thing ran flawlessly," Biffle said.
    "I was excited we could run with Montoya. The last couple of years he's been really fast here...and we could run with him today."
   If Biffle had gotten around Harvick for second, he might have had enough time to catch McMurray. "I could have given him a try.
    "Kevin was blocking the corner -- entering low and really protecting that line." 
    Having clean air here, like Biffle had much of the day, and Montoya, and McMurray at the end "it's really unbelievable the difference," Biffle says. "It's like you've got brand new tires when you're out front, and 20-lap tires when you're six car-lengths behind a guy -- The thing just stops.
    "I was behind Kevin and just sliding the front....and sliding the back right up against the fence, and I just couldn't get the gas down. I just couldn't get enough of a run to get to him."
   The stretch run was 11 laps around this 2-1/2 track, and Biffle snaked quickly up to third in the first few laps. "Then my tires were starting to fall off a little bit. 
    "I was a lot faster than Kevin.  I tried the top a little bit, which was probably stupid. I tried to get my fender outside of him...I might have been able to make that work, but I didn't want to wreck, so I just gave up on that."
   But most of the day Biffle was quite impressive, and he knew it: "My car was really, really fast all day.  I could just cut to the bottom and lay the
throttle to it. 
    "I was closing on the guys 10 mph faster than they were.  I just drove by Tony (Stewart) on the short chute....."
    And all this bodes well for Biffle at Pocono next weekend, which is a similar large track, albeit much bumpier.

   

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   Greg Biffle (lead car here) could match Juan Pablo Montoya lap for lap in Sunday's Brickyard 400. The two had the best cars in the field. (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)