Full Throttle

Greg Biffle was the first of the race leaders to run out of gas Saturday but, luckily for him, not the last. That distinction went to Matt Kenseth, whose team thought he could make the distance but instead required a fuel stop with four of 150 laps remaining. After Kenseth pitted and then stalled on pit road, Biffle took the lead and held on for a 5.323 second victory over Tony Stewart in Saturday’s Stater Bros. 300 at California Speedway.

It was Biffle’s second win of the season and 13th of his career. The win also ended teh driver’s string of three consecutive races with finishes of 21st or worse.

“We had an extremely fast race car. Something happened to the oil early on, we might have overheated the oil, but we bounced back,” said Biffle, who ran out of gas just as he was making a scheduled fuel stop on Lap 140. “I saw the fuel light come on and I said, ‘We’re not going to make it,’ but we came down, took a splash of gas and I got in and off pit road really good.”

Kenseth, who has won three times at California, was puzzled with his team’s decision not to pit.

“We should have pitted and gotten a splash of fuel like everyone else did and we would have won the race, but we didn’t,” he said. “For some reason, whoever was figuring the fuel mileage thought we could make it and we came up eight miles short. It’s disappointing for sure.”

Stacy Compton, who last stopped for fuel on Lap 90, made it to the end and finished third. Kenseth was fourth and Kasey Kahne fifth. Series points leader Michael Waltrip finished sixth and leads rookie Kyle Busch by 52 points.

Source: That’s Racing