Sweet relief: with talent and a top-notch ride, Greg Biffle appeared to be on the banked track to stardom, but he wandered from one disappointment to another in his second season. He really needed his win at Michigan

"It takes a little locus away from what we're trying to do at times," Biffle says. "For the most part, we show up as tough as we always have, running as well as we can. That doesn't change, no matter what's going on around us."

There are two other perceptions Biffle has to battle. First, he is stretched too thin. He is running a full Busch Series schedule (and has won four races, helping put him fourth in points).

"Analyze each race. The last run of the day, I've got a bad set of tires, and the car's way too loose, and I can't keep up. Is that because I run both series?" Biffle says. "If the radiator hose falls off, and I'm leading the Busch race at Chicago, is that because I'm racing the Nextel Cup car? You look at each race and examine what happened--does running both cars affect that? No."

McReynolds says: "There is no question he should be leading the Busch points. They have killed him mechanically with that Busch car. They could have potentially won eight or 10 races. Whatever car Greg Biffle is in, whether it's Busch or Cup, if you give him the right equipment, he can win a race in either division."

The second perception is that, on a multicar team, somebody has to be like the youngest kid in the family at the dinner table--with arms not long enough, demeanor not strong enough--the kid left scraping the bowls. In this case, Biffle is part of the fleet that includes the defending champion, Matt Kenseth, the venerable Mark Martin and Busch, and up until recently, Jeff Burton.

Biffle denies that's a problem. He notes the autonomy of the teams, adding that the Kenseth and Busch teams are together in their own building.

"Every team is responsible for putting their own car together," he says. "If you went to Wal-Mart and bought a model car, and you put yours together, and I put mine together, there're going to be a few differences. Mine may fit a little hit better. I might have filed on some parts. I might have used a little more glue on some spots.

"What I'm getting at, all the parts that are available to the teams are the same. How you use all those parts and which ones you decide to use ... is up to you. The sky's the limit in our organization."

The teams share testing data and information. But it's only natural that it can be applied differently. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't.

Note that it was Martin's team that took a chance last Sunday with a two-tire final pit stop, a gamble that didn't pay off when Biffle and his four fresh tires pulled away easily for the victory. Sometimes, as Biffle puts it, it's simply who "has the best mousetrap that weekend."

July 5, 2003, the night Biffle had the best mousetrap at Daytona, is beginning to seem like ancient history as Biffle gets ready for the Brickyard 400. Biffle has heard the talk, but he isn't ready to be relegated to the has-bin.

"I look at how long it's been since a lot of guys who have won a lot more races than I have have won a race," he says, listing Ward Burton, Jeff Burton and Ricky Craven. "There's a big list of guys.