Every once in a while your strategy works out.

We didn't get a win this weekend, but any time you can come out of Talladega with a top-five finish it still feels that way. Our 3M Ford Fusion was good all day, we dodged the big wreck, and, if I couldn't win, it was good to see my teammate Jamie McMurray in Victory Lane. Those guys have worked hard all year and they deserve it. Hopefully, we can experience that at least once in these last three races.

My strategy was to run up front as long as we held our track position, but then we got that penalty with the tire getting away on pit road and had to go to the rear of the field. I just decided to stay there. I tested the waters a few times and could get up there pretty good, but I wanted to stay out of trouble and keep the car in good shape until it was time to go.

Everybody makes the mistake, in my opinion, of going a little bit early. It's 15 to go and everybody gets to pushing and shoving, and I wanted to wait a little bit longer. When I decided to go I just kind of kept sneaking up through there and got to where I wanted to be. I knew I had to save fuel, so I saved fuel for 25 laps riding around on the top. I was riding around up there saving gas so I could make it.

We were sweating bullets with that green-white-checkered finish because the fuel pressure was showing that we were running low. We were sucking a little bit of air here and there and we were really sweating it because you never know how much you save. There's no meter in the car, so to speak, to know exactly how much is still in the tank, but it all worked out for us.

As far as this week goes, I'm really excited about going to Texas. I feel like that's our next opportunity to win one of these races this season. Talladega is always such a wild card that you never know what can happen, but I look forward to Texas because we were strong in the spring. That doesn't always mean you're strong in the fall, but I like that race track. I like the way it races. I think we've been learning with our cars and I can't wait to get there on Friday.

I'm excited to try some of these things we've been looking at trying and seeing how our car drives — seeing if we can make some more gains like we did at Kansas and start incorporating things to be better. Practice is kind of like our two-hour test session to see what we can learn, but at the same time get ready for that race while looking forward to gathering some information for next year, too.

That race track has a real narrow backstretch and the banking falls away real dramatically coming off of two. It's like they didn't keep enough banking far enough around the corner because you've got all this banking and you're going around the corner and then, all of a sudden, it's flat. There's still like 1/16th of the corner left and the banking is gone, so it kind of dumps you out, almost like there's a D-shape, so the exit of turn two is very difficult. It makes it hard to come off that turn, but three and four are more straightforward with the corner entry and corner exit into that double kind of D-shaped frontstretch.

Getting into turn one is pretty good, but there's a big bump in the middle of the corner. It's like a seam that runs from the bottom to the top and the further up you get the bigger the bump is, so, obviously, running up top it's easier on the corner exit of two because you follow that radius more and you're more turned before the exit, versus running the bottom and that banking falling away. Every race track kind of has its tricks and one of them is to get across that bump good if you're running up the race track, and if you're running at the bottom to be turning good enough to be able to come off the bottom and have momentum down that backstretch.

The qualifying trophy is like a $10,000 shotgun — it's a really prestigious shotgun — and then you get the six-shooters for the win. When I won there the trophy was a pair of boots, and it's just really cool. I'd sure like to have a pole there, but I wouldn't mind winning a set of six-shooters to go with my boots.

Before getting to Texas, however, I'm going to the SEMA show in Las Vegas. I'm gonna do an unveiling of a car that was built for the president of Barrett Jackson. It's gonna be an exciting time to unveil a car, and I'm also gonna go by the Sherwin Williams booth and then do a half-hour on Barry Meguiar's Car Crazy show, so I'm looking forward to that. I'm also going to look around and see all the neat stuff I know they're going to have on display. I really enjoy that.

I like the old cars, and when I say old cars I'm talking about the '60s. I really like those cars because those are the ones I grew up looking at and admiring. They've got a lot of cool cars there and people build a lot of neat stuff, so I mostly enjoy that and then seeing all of the new technology. I didn't go last year, so I'm gonna try to make up for lost time. I have to leave for Texas early on Thursday morning, so I'm not going to have a lot of time, but I know it'll be fun.

Enlarge By Rainier Ehrhardt, AP Greg Biffle (16) works to the inside of fellow Chase drivers Jeff Gordon (24) and Mark Martin (5) in a tightly contested battle during the middle stages of Sunday's race at Talladega.