Roush Fenway Racing is rising again

And he's not stopped thinking about a first Cup championship, how close he came before.

"I've been thinking about that since 2005," he said

That doesn't mean the Roush contingent has been ordered to shepherd Biffle to the championship stage at Homestead. The ferocity of the late racing at Dover should dispel those notions.

"The plan was [to] have Greg win," Kenseth joked, wryly. "We just tried to make it look really good. ... I don't know. From my part -- I know Carl and everybody has to speak for themselves -- but the team order thing, first of all, Jack's never given me a team order in the car before, and if he did and it was for a race win, I'm sure I would be fired on Monday because you're all going to race as hard you can race to win. It's really, really hard to win these races. It's harder from some of us than others this year, but it's tough to win -- you're going to do everything you can to try to do that."

Such is the corporate mentality of Roush Fenway, a system reflective of the nature of the team founder and his lieutenants. Racing, Roush has said, is an "overtly aggressive, competitive, potentially combative circumstance." He expects his team members to settle their own differences and fight, within reason, for what they want. Competition breeds success, but not necessarily harmony. If the by-product is victory, then so be it.

Whereas fierce competitors at Hendrick Motorsports like Jeff Gordon, Jimmie Johnson and Dale Earnhardt Jr., often appear collegial, Roush drivers often seem like brothers battling for a demanding father's love.

Team president Geoff Smith suggested in a 2005 team meeting that Kenseth and then-crew chief Robbie Reiser, a perennial title-contending tandem that was one of the sport's longest running, should be dissolved when their performance stagnated. Reiser heard a slight and gleaned motivation, which is exactly what Smith wanted. He's had no problem being the foil for his drivers' animosity when it served to generate the reaction the team ultimately desired.

"There's no sugar-coating with Jack," Smith said. "It can be difficult for some people to be kind of laid open in front of everybody, but at the same time it's not done with malice and it's done with a view of making things better. It works really, really well."

Sometimes that manifests itself in the carping that follows one team's performance dipping below another -- questions why their equipment failed and a teammates didn't - or the crew-chief swapping that altered some of Roush's continuity the past few years. Sometimes it bubbles over in Edwards drawing back for an apparent punch of Kenseth last fall at Martinsville that the organization dismisses a game of "made ya flinch."

But when performance intertwines throughout the organization, it manifests great spectacle bred of ultimate competition. Biffle, Edwards and Kenseth have combined to win 27 races since 2005.