BY TEAM FORD RACING CORRESPONDENT

Avondale, Ariz. — As prognostications go, you can do a lot worse than the one Greg Biffle proffered following Friday afternoon’s qualifying session for the Checker O’Reilly Auto Parts 500 at Phoenix International Raceway.

“We’re going to be good,” Biffle said after putting the No. 16 3M Ford Fusion on the outside of Row 3 for Sunday’s race. “I just don’t know how good.” Still, good is, well, good. And Biffle was good all day at the tricky one-mile PIR oval, where he was fourth in the day’s lone 90-minute practice session and qualified sixth behind Martin Truex Jr., Kurt Busch, Jimmie Johnson, Kasey Kahne and Denny Hamlin.

Biffle has clearly benefitted from some of the R&D work that engineers have been hard at work on lately, continuing to refine the suspension setups to optimize the handling of his Roush Racing Ford Fusion. And with testing forbidden, now is the time to try and get a jump on 2010.

“We’re trying some stuff,” confirmed Biffle. “First run of the day we went out and ran 10th on the sheets, came in, put some goofy stuff in there, it didn’t drive very good, made an adjustment on it, still didn’t like it, immediately came back and started working on a few other race things, and went right into qualifying trim. So that’s about all we had.”

Also impressive Friday at PIR was Ford’s newest team member, AJ Allmendinger, driver of the No. 44 Drive One Ford Fusion out of the Richard Petty Motorsports stables. The ‘Dinger qualified 16th, a more-than-respectable outcome for just his second week behind the wheel of a Ford. “We’ve got to keep learning,” said Allmendinger. “It’s a process. It’s so hard. All of us, we just wish we could sit on the race track and it would be great, but we know the potential is there, and that’s what’s important.”

AROUND THE GARAGE
Contrary to the orgy of media reports that a deal with Danica Patrick and JR Motorsports was nearly complete, on Friday team owner Dale Earnhardt Jr. told USA Today that a deal with Danica wasn’t close. And with GoDaddy.com moving from the JR Nationwide team to Mark Martin’s Sprint Cup team next year, Earnhardt may not even field any full-time Nationwide car. “I'm not sure JR Motorsports will field a full time ride next year at all,” Earnhardt told the newspaper.

Also complaining about lack of sponsor dollars was Robby Gordon, who said he might have to cut back to 8-12 races last year because of a lack of funding. In fact, Gordon told Scenedaily.com that is car was unsponsored for 11 of 36 races this season and that he could try to do a ride-share deal, splitting time with another driver next year, perhaps David Gilliland.