Full Throttle

Despite having a less than perfect race, Greg Biffle won an eventful Sam’s Town 300 Nationwide Series race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

The Roush Fenway racer ended a three-year winless streak in NASCAR’s second-tier series but not without some drama. Early on he had to serve a penalty for speeding on pitroad and then later in the race he ran out of fuel while leading.

On the last restart, he had fuel pressure issues again and almost lost the lead on the penultimate lap to his teammate Carl Edwards, who nearly lost control while trying to perform the pass on the green-white-chequered finish.

While Edwards kept his car pointing forwards avoiding crashing on his teammate, Biffle took advantage to remain up front and drive to victory lane after 77 races without a Nationwide Series win.

“It was definitely not short of action,” said Biffle about his race. “It certainly was an eventful day. I was feeling a little bit under the weather for starters and then we got caught speeding on pitroad.

“But the car was just so fast. We were able to drive right through the field and worked our way back to the front. I had a little hiccup on a pitstop and lost one spot but then ran out of gas there. It was kind of unexpected.

“There at the end we ran out of gas going into turn one and that’s what gave Carl a chance to get under me going into the backstretch but the car ran so well that I was able to get back by him.”

Edwards finished second but he equally had an eventful race. He too had to serve not one but two penalties on pit road, one for speeding and another for entering the pits when they were closed. He also recovered well from being a lap down at one point due to a tire issue.

The former Nationwide Series champion caused the eighth of a total twelve caution periods when he spun on the backstretch.

“Man it was a wild day from the beginning,” said Edwards. “We had a great race car. There were a lot of wrecks. We had that tyre go down and we had a speeding penalty, all sorts of things happened and luck was on our side and we had a chance to race up there for the win.”

Brian Vickers finished the race third driving for Braun Racing, recovering well from a pitroad penalty for a missing lug nut on his last stop. Jason Leffler finished fourth, also battling fuel pressure issues on the last restart, while Dale Earnhardt Jr rounded out the top-five.

Many of the fastest cars of the day were involved in incidents. Kevin Harvick led 41 laps - second to Biffle who led 86 – but was involved in a multi-car crash halfway through the race.

Denny Hamlin also led laps but finished his race hard against the wall due to a cut tyre and contact with Mike Bliss. Kyle Busch also hit the wall as soon as lap 23 while battling for the lead with Harvick, taking polesitter Scott Speed with him.

“It was just 100 percent my fault for racing for the lead that early in the race,” said Busch about his crash.

“You have a clean shot off of turn two and go in the inside of somebody and race off into turn three and I felt like all of the air was taken off my side, but I guess that’s just a part of hard racing. I shouldn’t have been doing that that early in the race - I shouldn’t have.”

The race had to be red-flagged for ten minutes to clean up Busch’s wreck, and then later again for another multi-car incident, taking the event close to the three-hour mark.

Edwards now leads the championship ahead of Vickers, Biffle and rookie Brendan Gaughan, who impressed again with another top-ten finish.

Notes: The victory, Biffle’s 19th in the 223 starts in the series, broke a 76-race drought dating to Feb. 25, 2006 at Fontana, Calif… Sixty of the 209 laps were run under caution, a race record. The previous mark was 58 laps in 2007.