Biffle Hits the Breaks Late for Victory at Darlington

Greg Biffle’s chances of winning a race he dominated appeared gone after his Roush Racing team made some late-race changes.

But a timely spin by Mark Martin and four fresh tires were all Biffle needed to win Saturday night’s NASCAR Nextel Cup race at Darlington Raceway in overtime.

“The second to last run there we tried some tire pressure things and got my car way too loose,” Biffle said. “I thought, ‘Why in the world would we wait until the last run to try something?’ It went the wrong way, but we recovered from that.”

Biffle, who led 176 of 370 laps on the treacherous 1.366-mile, egg-shaped oval in Darlington, S.C., fell behind on a late pit stop, but got another chance when Martin spun, bringing out the 12th caution flag just five laps from the scheduled finish.

Ryan Newman, who had taken charge late in the race, chose to stay on the track while Biffle and several other contenders pitted for tires. When the green flag waved again for a two-lap shootout, beginning on Lap 369, Biffle, taking advantage of those fresh tires, charged from fourth. He passed Carl Edwards, Ken Schrader and, finally, Newman before taking the white flag for the last lap.

Biffle went on to defeat Jeff Gordon by 0.089 of a second, adding the Dodge Charger 500 to victories earlier this season in California and Texas.

Kurt Busch hit the wall on the first lap, was handed a two-lap penalty later in the race, bad-mouthed NASCAR over his radio and ended up in a closed-door meeting with officials.

“His actions were certainly not befitting of a champion,” NASCAR spokesman Jim Hunter said after the race.

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Yamaha’s Chad Reed raced to his fifth THQ World Supercross GP/THQ AMA Supercross Series 250cc victory of the season, beating Ricky Carmichael in front of 39,106 at Sam Boyd Stadium in Las Vegas.

Also, Suzuki’s Davi Millsaps won the Dave Coombs Sr. 125cc East/West Shootout.

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Hoping to win his fourth consecutive Formula One race, Fernando Alonso clocked the second-quickest time of the first of two qualifying sessions for today’s Spanish Grand Prix, just .016 of a second behind Toyota’s Jarno Trulli. Kimi Raikkonen of McLaren was third.

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Andrew Phipps led wire-to-wire to win the Lucas Oil Super Late Models Series race at Irwindale Speedway. The race was halted for about 20 minutes by a third-lap, 12-car collision that put 10 cars out of the race. No drivers were injured.