Bet on Biffle, Stewart to show well at Vegas

LAS VEGAS – Nobody should be surprised if Greg Biffle and Tony Stewart turn today’s UAW-DaimlerChrylser 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway into a rerun of the race two weeks ago at California Speedway.

The NASCAR Nextel Cup stars who finished second and first, respectively, in last season’s standings were the class of the field at California, only to wind up in the back of the pack after late-race engine failures.

That left Biffle 38th and Stewart 22nd in points after the first two races of 2006. But neither driver seems worried.

“You know what, our whole team feels really, really good about last week – like we won almost,” Biffle said. “Spirits are high because the fact is that we have good race cars and we’re running very well. And that’s the key. … We had great pit stops, we had a great pit strategy, we had the fastest car for most of the day. Tony Stewart was a little faster at times, but that is the confidence we need to keep going race after race.”

Instead of worrying about the last race, Stewart is thinking about the big picture – NASCAR’s Chase for the Nextel Cup championship, a 10-race playoff at the end of the season that will include the top 10 drivers in the standings and any other driver within 400 points of the lead after the first 26 events.

“Oh yeah,” he said. “With the way the point format is, we’ve got 24 weeks to get it done. We don’t have to worry if we’re 600 points out, as long as we’re in the top 10. So, you can have a disappointing day, as far as your finishing position.”

Stewart, the two-time and reigning Cup champion, seems to get off to a slow start just about every year. In 2005, bad luck and frustration were his nearly constant companions in the early going and Stewart was buried deep in the standings before closing out the year with 19 top-10 finishes in the last 22 races.

After, opening this season with a fifth-place finish at Daytona and running so well at California, Stewart remains confident that his Joe Gibbs Racing team is on the right track.

“To me, it was five times more important than the loss of the points just knowing that we had a car that was competitive and that could run up front all day,” Stewart said. “That and this place are going to be a good judge of where your program is at early in the season.”

Biffle is part of the powerful Roush Racing juggernaut that put all five Cup drivers into the Chase last year. Roush cars have won five of the eight Cup races on the 1.5-mile Las Vegas oval.