LOUDON, N.H. – Can Greg Biffle win the Sprint Cup? Seems even his car owner doesn’t think so, despite the fact that Biffle opened the Chase with a win on Sunday at New Hampshire Motor Speedway.

In Jack Roush’s mind, Biffle is an afterthought, the overlooked understudy to Roush staples Matt Kenseth and Carl Edwards.

Asked directly if he thought Biffle was ready to win a Cup title, Roush – co-owner of Roush Fenway Racing with a five-car stable – immediately talked about his two more heralded teams. Seated just a few feet from Biffle at a table inside the New Hampshire media center, Roush talked about Biffle like some up-and-coming kid whose win had everything to do with just being in the right place at the right time.

And nothing at all with his abilities behind the wheel.

"Robbie Reiser is doing a great job getting all the things lined up, the people in the right spots," Roush said. "We think we're peaked. We're certainly going to be able to make a run at it with two, if not three, of our cars."

If there were any doubts as to which two of the cars Roush was speaking of, he laid them to rest only a few moments later. While Biffle celebrated an emotional win, Roush proclaimed his first concern was Kenseth – who’d been caught up in a wreck and finished the day 40^th.

"I will not sleep tonight based on what happened to Matt Kenseth," Roush said. "I will not take sufficient joy and glee from what happened to (Biffle and Edwards) that I'll get past what happened to the 17."

The simple fact is that with Jack Roush, it’s always about Jack Roush.

It’s about the organization he built, about the parts and pieces that make his cars go. For Roush, it’s the car that gets to victory lane, not the driver.

But the No. 16 Ford didn’t size up two-time defending Cup champion Jimmie Johnson on a late-race restart on Sunday on its own. Nope, sorry Jack, but it was Biffle who did the heavy lifting at the end of the Sylvania 300.

Not that Roush will see it that way.

He’s all too happy to make a mockery of the English language, throwing out seemingly exotic words and phrases – the actor on the stage playing the role of a high-tech engineer. He wants us all to think that it’s about formulas and hypotheses with these things they call stock cars – when all it really does is make people willing to see through all the gobbledey-gook cringe.

"We really enjoyed the support of Ford Motor Company to get us here with all the technical things all the other manufacturers are providing to their teams," Roush said. "Today, though, it was a blend of the things, the algorithms and the analysis things that the engineers would suggest."

See, Biffle had nothing to do with it. Credit Greg Biffle though, for understanding where Roush is coming from and not taking it personally.

In fact, he seems to sort of enjoy taking barbs at his owner.

"Well, the white coats did a good job getting the car ready for today," Biffle said, no doubt muffling laughter bubbling up from within. "We might be better fit to rummage through all the test data we have, all the information and paperwork, just science out – scientifically look at what everything's been done, try and analyze what the best scenario is going to be for going to Dover and going to Kansas for the first time, all these other places, and back to Phoenix. Look over the test data, look at what we did at Milwaukee and here, make a good decision on it."

No matter what decisions they make, though, they won’t be up to par with how Biffle systematically conserved fuel, kept his brakes cool enough to work and then set Johnson up with a run off of turn two that gave him the lead.

No white-coat formula could have predicted that – no matter if Roush professes they could or not. If

Roush had his way, you get the sense, computers would drive the cars.

"I don't look forward to the day when we'll be able to have somebody put on a piece of paper all the things you need to do," Roush said, but the intimation was clear. He thinks that day is nearly here.

It will be hard enough for Biffle to win the Cup championship. Johnson’s second-place run suggests that he’s still riding the momentum that put him in as the third seed with two straight wins to conclude the "regular season," and Kyle Busch certainly will try to rebound with a vengeance from his disastrous opening round at New Hampshire.

Add to that the fact that neither of the last two Sylvania 300 winners – Kevin Harvick and Clint Bowyer – went on to be serious Chase threats.

But it also won’t help Biffle in the least that Roush himself considers him nothing but an afterthought.

Just another part built into the race car. Roush’s race car.

Posted at 10:00 p.m. by TBarrett