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Chase Opens With Shakeup

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By TONY FABRIZIO

The Tampa Tribune

Published: September 15, 2008

LOUDON, N.H. - Picture a shaker and you have an idea of what the opening Chase race did to the Sprint Cup championship picture Sunday at New Hampshire.

On a gray and damp afternoon, Kyle Busch's points lead vanished with a mechanical failure, and previously winless Greg Biffle thrust himself into the title picture with a surprise victory in the Sylvania 300.

Jimmie Johnson finished second and Carl Edwards third, and they took co-possession of the points lead, although Edwards holds a tiebreaker advantage with his six victories.

Biffle moved to within 30 points of the lead and Jeff Burton and Dale Earnhardt Jr., fourth and fifth Sunday, climbed to within 50 points. Busch, who has a season-high eight victories and led Biffle by 598 points before the standings were reset, fell to eighth place, 74 points out.

"That's a credit to NASCAR and all those guys who came up with the Chase format," said Biffle, who won for the first time since Sept. 30 at Kansas. "It gives 12 guys an opportunity to win a championship."

Busch, who had led the standings for 41/2 months, apparently wasn't so enthralled with the format. He left the track without a word after his 34th-place finish, somehow eluding multiple media stakeouts.

His crew chief, Steve Addington, wasn't exactly loquacious.

"We weren't very good when we unloaded here, but we felt like we did the right things and were going to have a good race car," he said.

Busch started on the pole after Friday's qualifying was rained out and led the first four laps before falling back. By Lap 19, he knew he had a major suspension problem.

As it turned out, a sway bar bolt had worked its way loose. "Human error," according to Joe Gibbs Racing vice president Jimmy Makar.

The rest of Busch's race was a matinee of misery. He picked up two penalties when pitting under the first caution on Lap 35 for repairs, then garnered a third penalty on a Lap 64 stop for pitting early.

On Lap 83, he looped his car on the backstretch without hitting anything, but when he came back onto the track from the infield grass, he got hit by Jamie McMurray.

Additional repairs left him eight laps down. Attrition allowed him to finish ahead of nine cars.

"That's the first race like that he's had this year," said Hendrick Motorsports owner Rick Hendrick, the owner of Johnson's, Earnhardt's and Jeff Gordon's cars. "I've had it happen to me. You come out of here and you're behind, and you've been ahead."

Johnson, the two-time defending Chase champion, led a race-high 96 laps and seemed headed for a third consecutive victory. But Biffle, who would say later he was holding back to save fuel and brakes, passed him with 12 laps to go after a restart.

Biffle held on before the crowd of about 100,000 for his 13th career victory.

"I could see the 48 Johnson," Biffle said. "We were catching him or staying even with him. So he wasn't getting away from us at the point when I was saving. So I knew that with about 15 to go I was going to have to start pressing to catch him."

Johnson sounded as surprised as everybody else. He said his car was good and he thought he would be able to keep Biffle at bay.

"I really felt after the two or three restarts we had on that set of tires, my tires would be good and I'd be able to get away from Greg," Johnson said. "But his stuff must have been coming in as well, and he was too strong on the short run."

Earnhardt might have been happy with fifth place had he not led twice for 79 laps. Knowing he had the best car on the track for part of the race left him somewhat frustrated.

"We put on a set of tires and fell to 10th or whatever," he said.

Even more frustrated was Tony Stewart, who ran second and third early, damaged his fender when he hit Johnny Sauter on pit road and picked up a penalty for speeding off pit road on another stop. Still winless in 2008, the two-time champion battled back to finish eighth.

"It just shows how the complexion of the sport can change from week to week," Stewart said. "Last week a second-place finish at Richmond, it was a mistake in the pits, and this week it was a mistake on the driver's part."

"I got a drive-through penalty that got us way behind. We had some bad luck, and then I made our problem worse with the speeding penalty. To fight back to eighth, I'm pretty happy with that."

Reporter Tony Fabrizio can be reached at (813) 259-7994 or afabrizio@tampatrib.com.

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