LONG POND, PA. (AP) - Greg Biffle won it for Jack Roush.
Biffle raced to victory in an often-delayed Sprint Cup race at Pocono Raceway on Sunday to snap a 64-race winless streak and take the checkered flag for his injured team owner.
Biffle hadn’t won since the first two races in the 2008 Chase for the Cup championship. But with Roush in the Mayo Clinic for injuries sustained in a plane crash in Wisconsin, Biffle found Victory Lane.
“We know he’s watching,” Biffle said. “It’s been really tough. We worked so hard.”
It was also the first win of the season for both a Ford and Roush Fenway Racing.
Tony Stewart was second and Roush driver Carl Edwards was third. Kevin Harvick and Denny Hamlin, who won the last two Pocono races, round out the top five.
Edwards spoke with Roush on Sunday morning and said his boss sounded in good spirits.
“He was Jack,” Edwards said. “Don’t mess anything up. Don’t wreck. He’s been through a lot this last week. He really needed that victory. That’s pretty cool. I’m sure he’s really hard to handle for all those nurses in the hospital.”
The start of the 500-mile race was delayed by rain, then had two lengthy red flag stops that totaled nearly 50 minutes.
Elliott Sadler and Kurt Busch both walked away from scary wrecks that knocked them out of the race.
Biffle’s crew kept the same car after driving the No. 16 Ford to a season-high third-place finish last week at Indianapolis. That finish put Biffle in 11th place in the points standings and now he’s strongly positioned himself with five races for a spot in the 12-driver field for the championship chase. He won Chase races at New Hampshire and Dover in 2008 before falling into this winless drought. Biffle was winless last year for the first full season of his career.
He won’t be shut out back-to-back seasons.
“The whole company needed it,” Biffle crew chief Greg Erwin said. “I can’t really explain what this means. I know (Roush) is with us. This is a brand new car at Indianapolis and we brought it here because we liked it so much.”
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