Roush, Biffle in thick of title chase

LOUDON, N.H. - Have things turned this quickly on NASCAR's Sprint Cup tour?

Suddenly the title picture looks as if Jack Roush's Carl Edwards and Greg Biffle will be facing off against Rick Hendrick's Jimmie Johnson with Kyle Busch, the season-long leader, suddenly a question mark.

It's clear that Biffle and crew chief Greg Erwin are in the heat of the fray and clearly thinking title. Biffle, remember, has already won both a Truck and Busch (now Nationwide) championship. He has lost a couple of those, and lost the 2005 Cup title by just 35 points. The guy has been right there, so this is nothing new.

And Erwin, one of the sport's respected crew chiefs, through the Richard Childress and Robby Gordon camps, is coming into his own as a team leader for Biffle and Roush.

In fact, Biffle and Erwin said that they may be a bit ahead of schedule.

"I felt we were a definite threat if we made it, because of the momentum we've had -- and how good the tracks are in the Chase for me: Dover, Homestead, we've won at Texas, Kansas … . There are a bunch of great tracks for us in the Chase," Biffle said.

"There were some I was a little nervous about, and one was Loudon. The other two are Martinsville and Talladega."

Erwin? "Our history here at Loudon hasn't been real strong, so, quite honestly, we thought if we come of here with a top-10 and roll into Dover, where we're second, third and fifth or sixth our last three trips, we'd be able to put a solid string together and get up there in the points."

Biffle, with his first win of the season, becomes only the second Ford driver to win this year, joining Edwards. Last season, Ford teams won nine times; Biffle's win was Ford's seventh this season.

The work behind the scenes for one of these title teams is quite remarkable. These operations are no longer 10-man crews floating through the season like surfers.

"You need to understand that when we go to just a two-day test, the amount of information we can collect nowadays with the systems we run on the cars is more than I and my engineer and the engineer next to me and the engineer next to him can look at in three days or four days or a week," Erwin said.

"I mean, there's that much information there. Sometimes you don't realize it until two weeks after the test."

Conversely, when a team hits on something, it's probably pretty solid and long-lasting. Like Jimmie Johnson has shown over the past several weeks, too.

This has been one of Biffle's favorite tracks, but not lately: "I love this racetrack, and with the old car we ran extremely well here, almost won a couple, had top-fives every time.

"But with the new car we haven't run very good. It was really troublesome to get going."

Not this time, though.

"I took care of my car through the middle of the race, though I ran pretty hard when I was trying to catch Junior to get the lead. Then Jimmie caught us, and I decided to ride for a while and wait toward the end."

Of course Biffle, Erwin and Roush can thank NASCAR's Brian France for the Chase scenario. Otherwise these guys would be some 600 points out of it.

Under the old scenario, the title race right now would be a two-man battle between Kyle Busch and Carl Edwards.

Whether or not the new points system is fair is still debatable.

But Biffle has a new lease on life.

"That's a credit to NASCAR," Biffle said. "It gives 12 guys a chance to win a championship.

"Yeah, I'm surprised the point leader coming in -- especially with an 80-point lead -- is that far back. I knew he would finish bad when he was two laps down, but that can happen with the Chase. … It's unbelievable how fast you can fall."

? Mike Mulhern can be reached at mmulhern@wsjournal.com.