Biffle is still baffled by sputtering start

One year ago, Greg Biffle won a garage-best six races, led the second-most laps, and finished only 35 points shy of his first Nextel Cup championship.

This season, Biffle's No. 16 Ford Fusion has been nearly as strong as his Taurus was in 2005. Biffle won the pole for the UAW-DaimlerChrysler 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. He's led 555 laps, second-most behind Tony Stewart (801), the driver of the No. 20 Chevrolet who edged Biffle for the '05 championship.

But for all his efforts, the Roush Racing pilot is 23d in the standings, 560 points behind leader Jimmie Johnson. Last week, an engine failure forced Biffle to bow out of the Aaron's 499 at Talladega Superspeedway after completing only 45 of 188 laps. When teammate Mark Martin crumpled his car in an early wreck, crew members from the No. 6 team swapped the damaged hood for that of Biffle's Ford. After all, the No. 16 wasn't going anywhere.

No wins. No top-fives. He's failed to finish three races, tying him with Ryan Newman, Bobby Labonte, and Ken Schrader for the most DNFs among top-40 drivers, making him wonder whether some pranksters have been slipping his team defective parts from the Roush machinery bin.

''I definitely had a car on Monday that could have finished up front," Biffle said earlier this week. ''I was being cautious with it, being careful, doing all the things I needed to do. Unfortunately, we had a part failure again. They have found no rhyme or reason to it. It seems like my engine ends up with the bad part that failed. It's just one of those things that happens."

Biffle had a dominant machine for February's Auto Club 500 at California Superspeedway, a race he won last year. After starting on the front row, Biffle led 168 laps but staggered back to the garage with a blown engine. Last month, he started fifth in the Samsung/RadioShack 500 at Texas Motor Speedway, where he also swiped the checkered flag in 2005. But Biffle was involved in an accident that forced the No. 16 to retire after only 81 laps.

Fortunately for Biffle, he finds himself tonight at Richmond International Raceway, where the Roush driver has posted three straight top-10 finishes, the longest current streak at the Virginia short track. Last fall, in the final race before the Chase for the Nextel Cup, Biffle claimed a third-place finish at Richmond.

While he's been out front for much of this year, Biffle has taken a different strategy into his seven previous starts at Richmond, where he'd led only 17 total laps. In comparison, Johnson (eight career Richmond starts) has led 124 laps and Newman (also eight starts) has been in front for 354 turns around the track.

In 2005, Biffle, coming off his third win of the season, entered the spring Richmond race third in the points standings. He has many more drivers to overtake this season, but Biffle hasn't given up hope on qualifying for the Chase.

''The team's real excited because we've been running so well," Biffle said. ''We ran extremely well at Phoenix. We ran extremely well everywhere we've been. Our pit stops are really good. We just need to keep doing that. We know that if we keep doing that, we'll get some top-five finishes and some wins in the near future."

Kasey Kahne, who claimed the checkered flag at last year's spring Richmond race, his first career win, isn't entering tonight's Crown Royal 400 with much momentum. On Monday, Kahne recorded a 39th-place finish at Talladega, the worst finish of a driver currently in the top 10 in the points race.

Early in the race, Kahne, currently fourth in the standings, was knocked out -- almost literally -- of the Aaron's 499 when his No. 9 Charger was involved in a multicar wreck. Kahne took a heavy hit on his left side. Hermie Sadler, whose car was also collected in the carnage, replaced Kahne for several laps when the No. 9 team decided to keep its driver out of the Dodge for the rest of the day.

But Kahne healed enough to participate in the second day of testing this week at Charlotte's Lowe's Motor Speedway. Kahne turned his best lap at 179.766 miles per hour, the 24th-fastest time of the session.

''I feel like that's where we won our first race but that didn't prove a whole lot," Kahne said of his first-ever win. ''That proved that we had a good car that day and we won. I think this year, the way things have gone with the consistency and the two victories so far, I think that's shown a lot more that this team is good and that we're going to be contenders each week. I think the way we've raced this year has proved a lot more than that one win last year."

Only a month to go before the drop of the green flag on the Busch East (formerly Busch North) season, which starts June 10 at Greenville-Pickens Speedway in Greenville, S.C. The circuit comes to Loudon, N.H., for the New England 125 July 14, then circles back to New Hampshire International Speedway in September, where the cars will race on the same day as the vehicles from the Craftsman Truck Series. One change -- aside from the division's name -- this season is the arrival of one-piece composite bodies that teams may use instead of the traditional metal bodies. This season, teams have the option of running the composites, which were introduced to save costs, and will be mandatory in Busch East in 2007 . . . Dale Jarrett, whose contract with Robert Yates Racing expires after this year, said yesterday he will decide his 2007 plans soon. One of Jarrett's options is to join Michael Waltrip as part of Toyota's new stable of cars. The Japanese automaker, already active and dominant in the truck series (Toyota drivers Todd Bodine and Ted Musgrave are 1-2 in the points race), will begin Cup racing next year . . . Rookie Cup driver Denny Hamlin will race tonight despite cutting his left hand and receiving stitches on Wednesday . . . Want the 2007 spring Richmond race to have your name on it? Crown Royal, sponsor of tonight's race, announced yesterday that next year's event will be called the Your Name Here 400 until a winner is selected before the 2007 Daytona 500. For more information, visit www.crownroyal.com/ynh400.