Biffle leaves competition in dust

JUSTIN, Texas – It looked so easy for Greg Biffle on Sunday.

He didn’t just win the Samsung 500 at Texas Motor Speedway, he absolutely drubbed the field. Just to make it fair, perhaps, he used the second-best car his team brought out here for him and then let everybody else start ahead of him.

And it still was a rout.

After letting somebody else lead for the first 86 laps, Biffle was in front for 219 of the final 249 laps though he said he was only using 95 percent of what his car had even in those rare moments when he felt another car challenging his position.

Still …

“I was nervous with 60 laps to go,” Biffle admitted after getting his second Nextel Cup victory of the season. “I was shaking in my boots that a caution was going to come out again and it was going to be a crap shoot.”

The No. 16 Ford, a backup pressed into action after Biffle cut a tire and pounded the wall in a practice session here on Saturday, was likely strong enough to overcome any obstacle flung in its path.

Even when Casey Mears took two tires and got back on the track first for a restart with 37 laps left, Biffle’s nervousness never made it nearly to the point of actual doubt.

“I was glad to see he took two tires,” Biffle said. “I wasn’t glad he was in front of me, but I wasn’t sure he was going to be a factor.”

Frankly, nobody but Biffle really was all day.

Biffle had won at California in the season’s second race in the same car he wound up driving Sunday. When the car he’d intended to drive, in which he’d qualified fifth fastest, hammered the wall in the crash in practice on Saturday, the team broke it out and went to work.

“It would have been better than this car,” he said. “It may not have been a ton better. … But to have a car like this one in the trailer ready to race. … We just pulled it out and it was pretty much ready to go.”

Biffle went to the rear of the field for Sunday’s green flag and had a couple of anxious moments as he picked his way toward the front. There were four crashes in the first 40 laps of the race, with around a dozen cars involved in them to some degree. Once Biffle avoided all of those, however, everyone else’s goose was cooked.

Biffle passed Tony Stewart for the lead on Lap 87 and for the rest of the day it was apparent that only misfortune or mechanical mayhem would change the inevitable. Neither materialized.

By Lap 219, Mears had established himself as the closest thing there was to a threat for Biffle.

Mears’ two-tire gamble was a long shot in hopes that track position would overcome the power of Biffle’s car. As it turned out, it wound up costing Mears a couple of spots in the final results – he wound up fourth behind teammate Jamie McMurray and points leader Jimmie Johnson.

McMurray, Mears and Sterling Marlin, who finished fifth, gave Dodge team owner Chip Ganassi three of the top five finishers.

But Biffle gave Roush Racing its third victory of the season, tying it with Hendrick Motorsports in that category.