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By Bruce Martin
SportsTicker Contributing Editor AVONDALE, Arizona - Greg Biffle was able to drive
through the smoke and debris to win Friday night's crash-filled
NASCAR Busch Basha's Supermarkets 200 at Phoenix International
Raceway. It was the first big-time NASCAR race held under the lights at
the one-mile oval, and with a record 14 caution periods for 67
laps - including two red flags that stopped the race for 10
minutes - apparently some of these drivers needed to turn on
their headlights. Although there were plenty of spins and crashes, there were no
serious injuries, just damaged race cars. It was an unusually sloppy night of racing in the desert, but at
the end, Biffle was smooth enough to avoid the craziness and
won convincingly in 2 hours, 24 minutes and 34 seconds,
averaging 83.007 miles per hour. He finished 1.969 seconds
ahead of fellow NASCAR Nextel Cup regular Elliott Sadler. The top two drivers were in Ford Tauruses. David Stremme's
Dodge Charger was third followed by Kevin Harvick's Chevrolet
Monte Carlo and Tony Stewart's Chevrolet. Stremme was the only full-time Busch Series driver in the top
five - the rest also run in Nextel Cup. The victory was Biffle's first Busch Series win of the season.
Biffle, the 2002 Busch champion who was second last week at
Texas Motor Speedway, has won 17 races in the Busch Series. His
last win was September 2004 at California Speedway. It was Biffle's second career win at PIR. His first came as a
rookie in 2001. Biffle has four top-five finishes and five
top-10s in his five career starts at Phoenix. Even the race winner had a minor spin but was able to recover. "I just had the car a little too loose at the start of the
race," Biffle said. "I jumped on the throttle trying to get a
run, and it was my fault to get the car turned around. We put
some wedge in the car, came up with a game plan. "Second last week and a win this week is great. I seemed to
have a better car on the long runs and Elliott Sadler had a
better car on the short runs. But if I could protect the
bottom, that's what I need to do to win." Busch Series points leader Carl Edwards finished eighth. Sadler was second in his 100th career Busch Series start. "Biffle was pretty good," Sadler said. "We worked our butts off
this weekend with a brand new car. To finish second with it,
I'm just proud of my guys. I have a great, great race team. We
are having more and more fun with this team. I didn't know it
was my 100th race. If I knew that, I would have felt a lot more
pressure than I did tonight." Sadler is impressed with Biffle's recent success. "He is the guy to beat on Saturdays and Sundays now," Sadler
said. "He is a driving machine. Sometimes you make your own
luck and he's doing a great job of that. In my mind, he's the
guy to beat every weekend right now in both Busch and Nextel
Cup." Stewart said the burns he suffered in last week's crash fire at
Texas Motor Speedway did not bother him. Third-place finisher Stremme's team is co-owned by former NFL
Hall of Fame quarterback Terry Bradshaw and Armando Fitz. "I enjoy that when I race with the Nextel Cup drivers," Stremme
said. "Those guys are a lot of fun to race with. I respect the
Nextel Cup drivers and I can't stress how much fun it is to
race against them. We put on a set of scuffed tires midway
through the race, so we put on a set of stickers (new) tires and
that got us going again." The next Busch Series race is next Saturday in the Aaron's 312
at Talladega Superspeedway.
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