Roush Fenway Racing is rising again

Jack Roush has one team order: when racing a teammate for a win, don't wad the cars up into a ball ... until you reach Turn One past the checkered flag.

And so was the high drama on Sunday at Dover, where Roush Fenway's Greg Biffle, Matt Kenseth and Carl Edwards battled throughout the final laps before giving the team a 1-2-3 finish that kept Biffle and Edwards near the top of the Sprint Cup standings with eight races left in the Chase for the Championship.

This could be just the beginning.

Roush Fenway is apparently back, perhaps invoking the days when the team placed all five drivers in the then-10-driver Chase for the Championship (though Tony Stewart won the title) and so concerned NASCAR it instituted a four-car cap that has yet to be enforced. Just three of five Roush Fenway drivers made the 12-man Chase this season -- David Ragan a near-miss at 14th and Jamie McMurray again trying to keep up), but this stream-lined group looks like a sharp arrowhead.

Biffle, winner of both Chase races this season, finished 35 points from the title in 2005 and could become the first to win titles in NASCAR's trucks, Nationwide and Cup series.

Edwards also finished 35 points behind Stewart in 2005 in his first full season, and won the Nationwide championship last year.

Kenseth captured the 2003 Cup title, the last before the Chase's inception, and the two-time defending series champion is one of only two to qualify for the Cup playoffs all five seasons.

Conventional wisdom within the garage suggests that a driver has to be ready mentally, emotionally and experience-wise to win a championship before they ever lift the trophy. (See: Busch, Kyle and 'not yet.') The three Roushketeers would appear to be primed.

Biffle, who started the Chase winless and in 12th place, is within 10 points of points-leader Edwards, and said he feels better now than in a six-win 2005 campaign that was derailed with three races left because a lug nut was not properly tightened at Texas and he had to pit to prevent his wheel from dislodging. He finished 20th, was second at Phoenix and won at Homestead, but Stewart glided to his second championship by finishing 15th.

"We've worked hard this season to get our cars and team to where they need to be, and I guess if you want to use the term 'peak at the right time,' I feel like we have worked very hard all season and now our hard work is starting to show up," Biffle said. "What we worked so hard for was to get a great pit crew, great race cars, great engine and then we've been able to wheel the car into Victory Lane."