Brad Keselowski, driver of the #12 Penske Dodge, leads Carl Edwards, driver of the #99 Scotts Ford, during the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Food City 500 at Bristol Motor Speedway. (Photo: Getty Images)

“I didn’t make the (2-tire) call, (crew chief) Greg Erwin did, but I think it was the right one,” said Biffle. “Yeah, we could go back and do it over again with four and see what that does, but this U.S. Census Ford Fusion was really, really fast. I was just too loose. If it would have been like I was earlier, or if the car had been driving like it normally did, I think I could have held them off – I really do – but I was just so loose I couldn’t put the power down. The back end was sliding.”

“I’m really happy with how we finished,” said Kenseth. “I’m kind of surprised we had that last caution. I thought that Kurt (Busch) had the best car. He was gonna win the race and I feel like he probably got one taken from him, but it was a good race. It was crazy. We didn’t run very good, but we made some good adjustments and had great pit stops and came up with a good result.”

And in the end, the bottom line is where you finish, not necessarily how you ran all day, as Edwards would attest.

“Yeah, we were pretty good on long runs, but we just didn’t get any because we were having the tire trouble,” said Edwards, who escaped his first race of three on NASCAR probation without incident. “So right about when the car would really start going there would be a caution. I learned a lot. We weren’t very good and then we got real good at the end, so that was good.”

Good, indeed. Not great, yet. But good. And five races into the season, good is an awfully good place to be right about now.

LINK > UNOFFICIAL RESULTS: Food City 500 - BRISTOL

Tom Jensen is the Editor in Chief of SPEEDtv.com, Senior NASCAR Editor at RACER and a contributing Editor for TruckSeries.com. You can follow him online at twitter.com/tomjensen100 and e-mail him at Jensen is the author of “Cheating: The Bad Things Good NASCAR Nextel Cup Racers Do In Pursuit of Speed,” and has appeared on numerous television and radio shows. Jensen is the past President of the National Motorsports Press Association and an NMPA Writer of the Year.