Q&A: Greg Biffle
Charging driver speaks on injuries and attacking The Monster Mile
Biffle is coming off a seventh-place finish in the Coca-Cola 600. He now stands 13th in the NASCAR Nextel Cup Series points. Also under NASCAR's new lap data statistical analysis, he has 103.7 driver rating. That's the third-best driver rating in the series.
Biffle took some time out recently to speak with members of the NASCAR media.
Q: Greg, you've had some tough luck early in the season. Here we are. You're still in pretty good shape in the points. What is the outlook for the rest of the year?
Biffle: Well, you know, I mean, it's really, really good. Like you said, we've had some tough luck getting the season started. But lately, you know, been extremely happy. Qualified on the pole at Richmond, finished fourth, went to Dover and won, had a great car Sunday at the Coca-Cola 600. You know, at the wrong place at the wrong time, you know, just being in front when that certain cycle comes around, ended up seventh with a really, really fast car.
Pretty excited about the rest of the season, you know, going to Dover, all the rest of the places that we've run very well at. Now that we seem like we have our season on track, certainly excited about our outlook.
Q. What kind of pressure do drivers feel to get back in a race car after an injury? I'm referencing whatever might happen with Tony Stewart. Do you feel like you have to get in there, that it's almost a punishment if you can't get in?
Biffle: That's kind of a touchy subject. I mean, you feel like that's your car, you're going to drive it. We're the ones being paid to drive it. We want to drive it. Certainly if I don't feel like I'm going to be as competitive or safe, certainly I don't want to be injuring myself any more. If the doctor tells me, You could have catastrophic injury if you get in another accident or simply you could reinjure yourself if you get in another accident, that would be the same to me as being injured to start with. I don't see a difference in that.
If a person can possibly do permanent damage if they're involved in another accident, that's where a person has to consider whether that would be an option to get in the car. But I've gotten back in the car a week later, not feeling 100 percent, beat up, ribs hurt, neck or shoulders or something. But that's just part of the game. Football players get sacked. Their ribs and shoulders may hurt. They're going out to play the game. That's part of what we do.
Q. Do you wish there was somehow some sort of rule that wouldn't punish you in terms of points if you were injured and couldn't make a race? I remember Dale Earnhardt, Jr., when he got burned, got back in the car really when he probably shouldn't have, obviously couldn't complete those races. Do you wish there was some rule allowing you to get out if it was really bad?
Biffle: Yeah, because of our sport, the way it's designed, it could help us. We've talked about -- I mean not we. There's been discussion about the points as well. Like if you fall out of a race, instead of getting 43rd-place points, have there be a cutoff, let's say everybody from 30th back gets the same amount of points. If you do have an engine failure in a race, like in let's say the last 10, you're nearly out of it, if you get 43rd-place finishing points. This is the same along the lines of what you're talking about, where a football player, a baseball player, if he gets injured, the team still plays, the team still can collect points, per se, whatnot.
You know, it could be a topic of discussion in the future. But there's always so many scenarios of how it could be or should be. I don't really know how that will actually work, you know.
Q. If you're racing against a guy that you know is hurting, how do you approach that? Do you treat him with kid gloves?
Biffle: Yeah, I mean, you know, I think you have to. I mean, this NASCAR sport is really truly, you know, like extended family. We say that. I say it with great pride because, you know, I respect all those guys that I work with every week a tremendous amount. They're all very talented. We do a lot of stuff together. Tony Stewart's deal at Eldora, Kyle Petty's Victory Junction Gang, I think we all support that. We each have our own foundations that we try and do things together. We race with each other every week.
If Tony's a little under the weather, he's not feeling well, he's driving the car at Dover, we all have to respect that fact that we're going to make sure -- you're going to race him like you race your teammate. You're going to make sure you race him clean. You're going to respect the fact that he's running for a title and a championship and for a sponsor and a team. I think any driver would respect that same thing for each other, you know, everybody else.
Q. I was hoping you could give me sort of a behind-the-wheel look at Dover, describe some of the nuances that track may have, what makes it different or similar to other tracks on the circuit?
Biffle: You know, Dover, every time we talk about a racetrack, we say it's a tough place. Dover is a more challenging racetrack because it's concrete. It is kind of bumpy, so to speak, where the sections of the concrete are cut. It's like a big Bristol, to explain it.
What happens there is the car can get away from you in a hurry. You come up off the corner, you get a little bit loose, you don't kind of respect the thing all the time with 100 percent of respect, the racetrack, you'll spin out and be in the inside wall in a second.
I've done it. I've watched people do it. It's easy to do because that place will creep up on you in a hurry, because it's high banked, concrete, it makes it a pretty treacherous place as far as not being up on the wheel a hundred percent.
Now, it is a fun place to race. It does provide a lot of side-by-side racing. We can run way up the racetrack, way down right on the white line, which is where I like to run. But it is a really fun place.
But you have to respect that place all the time, every single lap.
Q. You gained 10 spots in three races. What has been the effect on you as the driver and the team morale-wise, considering you had been running well, it just didn't fall your way?
Biffle: I tell you what, it's amazing. Prior to that fourth-place finish at Richmond, Doug and I made jokes about it, everything about being on suicide watch. He'd call me after the race, say, "You haven't slit your wrist yet, have you?" That's his patented, when we don't have a good race, just joking around.
I'll tell you what, it's really hard to keep upbeat when you're having what I would say are terrible races, lead all the laps, qualify outside front row, run out of gas on two laps to go, finish 17th or something. That can really get to you. It can get in your head.
We as a team just didn't let it happen. We felt like -- we showed up at the racetrack, we park our truck, unload our car, we feel like we are a top-five team. I said that in the media center that we consider ourself a top five team. We don't consider ourselves substandard because we're 28th in points or 30th in points. We feel and we have in our mindset that we are fifth this points. That's what kind of team we are. That gave us -- that kept our momentum and our spirits up for going to the race, running as good as we could.
We've simply had to put the last race totally behind us like, OK, we went to Phoenix, we ran well, whatever happened happened, this week we're concentrating on winning at Richmond, we're going to go to Dover and win or Darlington and so on.
Q. I want to get your thoughts about your teammate Mark Martin. After last year, it was supposed to be his last year, this year he's in the hunt again.
Biffle: It doesn't really surprise me. Mark Martin has a ton of talent. He's extremely passionate about driving these race cars. We've got, as a company, really good, good race cars. We're not quite as good as we were last year. Guys have kind of caught up to us a little bit. Maybe some things have changed. We've lost a little bit of our edge. We're still pretty dang tough. If we have good equipment and good cars, Mark is always going to be one of our guys running up front.
Q. What is your outlook on the future of Roush Racing? You have new rules coming, new cars coming. Is the organization prepared for what is going to happen in the next couple of years?
Biffle: I think so. It's certainly going to test everybody because there's going to be a lot to these new cars, a lot of emphasis has to be put on that.
I think we're all going to have to survive it. I think we all will survive it. It will just be -- definitely going to be tough.
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