It was a victory celebration of high emotion.
Not only did Greg Biffle end a 64-race winless drought, but he brought Ford back into victory lane for the first time since November last year in Talladega. Foremost in Biffle’s mind was team co-owner, Jack Roush, who was in a hospital recovering from injuries suffered in an airplane crash.
“Yeah, I have to tell you that when it got to be five to go, I started thinking about it. You know, I started thinking, This race is meant to be. It's for Jack. Then I thought, you know, spending all the time I've spent with the Ford people, you know, how desperate they are to prove they've got good products.”
Greg Biffle used a two tire pit stop during the final pit stop of the day to get the lead and then the win at the Pennsylvania 500 at Pocono Raceway. As his crew chief, Greg Erwin explained “at the end you got to give a shout out to those pit boys. That was a two tire, gas only stop. Took us in third and out with the lead.”
On the final restart, after the track was re-flagged and cleared for the wrecked cars of Kurt Busch and Elliott Sadler; apparently separate collisions on the same lap. Sam Hornish, Jr. had the lead, but he hadn’t pitted for tires, and Biffle made short work of the former IndyCar champ passing him for good with 21 laps remaining.
Tony Stewart finished second and Carl Edwards – Biffle’s Roush Fenway Racing teammate – was third. Stewart said, the polesitter said our guys did a great job of getting us out first car on four tires out of the pits, and that got us the opportunity to get by some of the guys that took two tires or no tires there at the beginning of the run. From there, we were able just to race hard.”
The race was marred by a scary late-race crash which resulted in a red flag period of about a half hour. The worst part came when Elliott Sadler hit an Armco barrier in front of an earth berm. The impact was so strong it ripped the engine right out of Sadler’s injured car. Sadler explained “I haven’t seen the replay, but somebody just ran into the back of us and turned us inside through the wet grass into the guardrail, so I was along for the ride. It was a very hard hit.”
Both Sadler and Kurt Busch, were not injured. Busch was hit from behind by Jimmie Johnson causing Sadler and others to slow down. Busch, acidly, said "I got wrecked on the straightaway. Jimmie Johnson drove straight through us," he said. Johnson apologized; he thought he was bump draft Busch. “Last thing I wanted to do was cause a wreck or crash the No. 2 or anything like that. I feel bad about that but we were all just racing real hard down the back.”
The race was delayed over 30 minutes for rain and there were two red flag stoppages.