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FYI WIRZ: NASCAR’s top Kansas City finishers talk before and after
By: Dwight Drum
http://Racetake.com

The Chase championship points tightened with Greg Biffle (No. 16) winning Sunday’s Price Chopper 400 presented by Kraft Foods, race 3 in the 10-race Chase to the Sprint Cup.

Jimmie Johnson (No. 48), Kevin Harvick (No. 29), Tony Stewart (No.29), and Jeff Gordon (No. 24) rounded out the top-five finishers. The top seven drivers over the start/finish line, including Carl Edwards and Matt Kenseth, were all Chase contenders. That solid performance shrunk the point spread, giving Jimmie Johnson the lead with Denny Hamlin trailing by only eight points.

The Chase for the Sprint Cup competition got amped up for the next stop on the circuit, Fontana, Calif., as the top eight drivers in the standings are at most only 85 points back from the leader.

The best at Kansas discussed race 29 of 36 in the long, ferocious NASCAR season before the green flag and after the checkers.

Greg Biffle (No. 16 Ford) Finished first

Before:

“Kansas is a unique track that I have always enjoyed racing at,” Biffle said. “I think I enjoy it because I’ve run well there. The last two weekends have not been a great start to the Chase for us so we really need to get to victory lane to try to make up some of the points. This is a resilient team though and we are definitely going to give it all we have until the checkered flag drops at Homestead.”

After:

“Once we got our car adjusted we were off and set sail,” Biffle said. “The thing was really fast. I didn’t think even if there were more cautions that they would catch us. We had such a great car today and I couldn’t be any prouder of my 3M Ford team today and the Pit Bulls. I was even saving a little bit out there at the end too. I knew the caution was going to come out and I would need some tire to race these guys.

“This is such a great race track. I am so excited we will be coming here twice a year.”

Jimmie Johnson (No.48 Chevrolet) Finished second

Before:

For a mile-and-a-half track, I think that Chicago and Kansas are similar,” Johnson said. “In years past, mile-and-a-half tracks have been our bread and butter. Kansas has a really cool transition in and off the corners where you can run a second and third lane. It is friendly and you can search around and try to find a line. The asphalt has aged pretty quickly there too, which has allowed us to run multiple lanes and move around. So in general, it is a track with options.”

After:

“That was a lot of work. It is just tough to pass here and to pass as many cars as we had to, I’m just really relieved that it is over and it is behind us,” Johnson said. “I’m glad we had the finish we did. There’s still a lot of racing left, but we’re doing the right things. We’re making bad weekends good weekends. I can’t thank (crew chief) Chad (Knaus) and all these guys on this Lowe’s car enough for their hard work and everybody at Hendrick Motorsports for giving us the tools to go to the race track and we’ll go to the next one.”

Kevin Harvick (No. 29 Chevrolet) Finished third

Before:

“For us, I think we just have to keep doing the things that we did up until this point,” Harvick said. “We won a few races, had a lot of top-five and top-10 finishes. On the days where we really struggled, I felt like we, for the most part, made something out of those days.

“We’ll see what happens. Whether we win or lose, I think everybody has done everything we can control. We’ll just go race now.”

After:

“The car was good from the drop of the green flag really,” Harvick said. “We just had to keep trying to gain track position and keep doing the things we had to do to our car to make it better and better.

“We’ve just got to keep doing those things and keep our cars in contention to run up front and lead some laps and get those points and we’ll see where we’re at when we get to Homestead.”

Tony Stewart (No. 14 Chevrolet) Finished fourth

Before:

Your win at last year’s race at Kansas: “Darian (Grubb, crew chief) made a great call getting two (tires), and the guys had an awesome stop,” Stewart said. “We got that track position at the end, and we had the luxury of being able to pick the inside or outside lane on the restart, and I kind of debated back and forth which side I needed to be on. But I kind of struggled when I was stuck on the bottom on restarts. So, I took a gamble and went to the top and got enough of a lead. By the time we got to (turns) one and two, I was able to run my line.”

After:

“I just couldn’t take off on restarts,” Stewart said. “I couldn’t get going in traffic. My car kind of sat up on top of the track and took a little bit to go. We’d get about 10 laps into it and it would be fast. Just gave up too much time up front.

“We’re not out until you guys say we’re mathematically out. Who would have dreamed we would have two weeks in a row like we had the first two weeks. So it’s proof it can happen. Talladega is still on the schedule (laughs) so that can jumble everything up too.”

Jeff Gordon (No. 24 Chevrolet) Finished fifth

Before:

I do like this track,” Gordon said. “It’s a nice track. As a driver, what you like is it transitions to straight-aways to corners, grip level and I like all those things about Kansas. We come in here with confidence with the team and the race track, but needing to build some confidence when it comes to our performance as a whole.”

After:

“This track has been good to us,” Gordon said. “We were hoping for a little bit more than that with the way things went all weekend long. The way the race started, was pretty optimistic but we were just missing a little bit there.

“We still have some work to do and we’re going to try to make that happen with the tracks coming up. They are good tracks for us. But they’re good tracks for our competitors too. It was a good day today. I just felt like we could have been better and we’re going to have to do that in the races coming up.”

FYI WIRZ is the swift presentation of pertinent motorsports topics compiled and condensed by Dwight Drum @ Racetake.com. Quotes provided by NASCAR and Sprint Cup team media.

Photo credit: Dwight Drum @ Racetake.com

ABOUT DWIGHT
Dwight Drum, a member of the National Motorsports Press Association, began in motorsports as a photojournalist and writer with Stripbike.com in 1998 and as editor created Zoomster.com (1999) and Racetake.com (2007). He has interviewed almost every big name in NASCAR, NHRA and IndyCar. He also has experience covering the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and has two stories in the 2010 book “Chicken Soup for the Soul: NASCAR.”

The opinions expressed in this articles are solely those of the author and not this website.

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By Reid Spencer
Sporting News NASCAR Wire Service

(October 3, 2010)

KANSAS CITY, Kan. — Greg Biffle and Jimmie Johnson got exactly what they needed Sunday at Kansas Speedway — Biffle by leaving the field in his dust and Johnson by persevering.

Biffle ran away and hid from the rest of the field in winning the Price Chopper 400 — the third race in the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup—by 7.638 seconds over Johnson, who rallied from his 21st starting position to claim the runner-up spot.

Johnson, seeking his fifth straight Cup title, didn’t leave the 1.5-mile racetrack with the trophy, but he heads to next Sunday’s race at his “home” track (Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, Calif.) with the series points lead.

Biffle entered the race 140 points behind Denny Hamlin, who finished 12th Sunday and lost the points lead to Johnson. With his second win of the year, his second win at Kansas and the 16th victory of his career, Biffle heads for California eighth in the standings and 85 points down to Johnson with seven races left in the Chase.

Johnson leads Hamlin by eight points.

“It was a great day for us,” Biffle said. “The car ran flawless. (Crew chief Greg) Erwin just made great calls in the pits, and the car just kept getting better and better and better. I was too loose for about the first three-quarters of the race.

“I didn’t want to adjust on it, because I was running in the top three, but they tightened it up, and off it went, man. All it need was a little bit of wedge in it to take off.”

Kevin Harvick finished third, followed by Tony Stewart, who led a race-high 76 laps before his car faded slightly in the closing stages. Jeff Gordon won an intense battle with Carl Edwards for the fifth spot, and Matt Kenseth came home seventh, as Chase drivers claimed the top seven positions.

The victory was a tonic for Biffle after last week’s 19th-place finish at Dover.

“We were kind of down in the dumps about Dover, one of our best racetracks, and we got trapped (when forced to pit off-sequence)—we had a top-10 car there. But we can’t go back and do it over again. We’ll keep doing the best we can.

“Everybody asks if we’re out of it, and I said, ‘We’re going to do the best we can. If we win ’em all, we win ’em all.’ ”

Despite taking the points lead, Johnson said it’s far too early to start thinking about a fifth straight championship.

“That would be foolish,” Johnson said. “It’s way too early to think about those things — way, way too early. … All I can do is worry about my team, what we have to do. Again, it’s early. I’m not worried about who is leading the championship right now.

“I know we came (into Kansas) second. Of course, I wanted to be leading. I could care less where the 11 (Hamlin) was today. It’s just not time to worry about that stuff. After Talladega (the seventh Chase race), teams and drivers can work on a strategy of protecting or taking chances. We have to get deeper into the Chase to be concerned about who the points leader is.”

Notes: Biffle’s win was worth a $100,000 bonus to his No. 16 Roush Fenway racing team. Ford’s director of North American Motorsports announced an incentive program for the Ford Chase teams before the race — $100,000 for each win in the final eight races, to be distributed throughout the team. … Despite two run-ins with David Reutimann, Kyle Busch salvaged a 21st-place finish and stayed within striking distance of Johnson, seventh in the standings and 80 points back.