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Sweet relief: with talent and a top-notch ride, Greg Biffle appeared to be on the banked track to stardom, but he wandered from one disappointment to another in his second season. He really needed his win at Michigan
Sporting News, The, August 30, 2004 by Mark McCarter
How to explain it? How to explain a victory that comes, seemingly out of nowhere, just when you think you simply couldn't stand one more kick in the gut? How to explain Greg Biffle's runaway victory last Sunday at Michigan International Speedway?
"Thank goodness," Biffle said.
Indeed.
Before last Sunday, it was easy to squeeze Biffle's season into a tidy package. In a racing version of CliffsNotes, his saga was short and bittersweet:
Run well.
Generate some optimism.
Uh-oh.
Repeat.
"I was at the point where if we can't fix it, we can't fix it," Biffle said.
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That still might turn out to be the story of his season. The victory in the GFS Marketplace 400 might be the ultimate tease, generating a huge burst of optimism to be followed by yet another string of misfortune that--well, nobody knows the trouble Biffle has seen.
Let's go back to the garage area at Indianapolis Motor Speedway as Biffle strolls to his hauler. It isn't the Elvis-is-in-the-building reaction a Gordon or Junior or Stewart appearance merits, but Biffle nonetheless is trailed by a swarm of autograph seekers.
He reaches his team's quarters, where three soldiers from the National Guard, one of his sponsors, sit in director's-style chairs outside, wearing camouflage uniforms. For an instant, nobody seems to know whether to shake hands or salute.
Biffle, who's 34 and in his second year of full-time racing at the Nextel Cup level, pops into his hauler, plops onto a countertop and greets crew chief Doug Richert. Both are buoyant over the previous weekend--a Busch win at Pikes Peak and a fourth-place finish in the Nextel Cup race at Pocono. They had put a litany of all them racin' deals behind them.
Or so it seemed.
Three hours later, Biffle, as they say in racing, backed into the fence. After a wreck during practice, his Ford looked like a stomped-on aluminum can--squished into a not-so-tidy package.
"It just got away from me," he says with a shrug.
You win a pole for the most prestigious race of them all, the Daytona 500. You smack into the wall at the most famous speedway of them all, Indianapolis, during practice, then finish sixth in the backup car.
You win a race in your 23rd start, the 2003 Daytona night race, and then you go through more than a year in which you can't find victory lane with a GPS. You hook up with a high-profile team amid promises of stardom, and you struggle. You get surrounded by more gossip than Paris Hilton.
"It's one of those teams that the finishes don't always reflect their performance," FOX TV analyst Larry McReynolds says.
You can't laugh. You can't cry.
"You slit your wrist," Richert says with a laugh from across the hauler.
Biffle opts for a more serious tone.
"You put it behind you," he says. "You have to. You think about it, it will get you down, and you'll feel like you can't do it. Then you'll be thinking, 'OK, what's going to happen now?' You can't think like that. You've got to think about the approach you normally take."
This begins a give-and-take between Biffle and Richert, the crew chief for the late Dale Earnhardt's 1980 NASCAR title as a 20-year-old midseason replacement. They begin to sound like a husband and wife who finish each other's sentences.
Biffle: "It's kind of like 'Dang, we did what we're supposed to do (at Pocono).' We finished where we've been racing."
Richert: "I think we named 10 races we were in the top five and didn't finish."
Biffle: "It gives us some confidence. Hey, we can finish where we deserve."
Richert: "We know we can run well."
Biffle: "That's why (Pocono) didn't feel any different."
Richert: "Because we've been there a lot."
Biffle: "It didn't feel any different except the last 10 laps."
Says McReynolds, a former Cup crew chief: "He reminds me of my time with Ernie Irvan. He drives a car hard. He gets everything out of that equipment you can possibly think about. Which makes you (as a crew chief) step up what you have to do. With Biffle, you never have that question if he's giving you 110 percent. You have to give him very durable equipment to let that happen."
Misfortune is accompanied by all sorts of nasty things in any sport, but maybe especially in racing. Don't miss the opportunity to kick a man when he's down. There are vultures everywhere, looking for a fresh carcass.
In the NASCAR Nextel All-Star Challenge, Biffle was wrecked by teammate Kurt Busch. Biffle told reporters that "getting wrecked on the straightaway by your teammate ... would be like your neighbor burning down your house by accident." The minor tempest that arose gave the impression that bad grades were being earned in the "works and plays well with others" category at Roush Racing.
Which, naturally, led to rumors Biffle would leave. First to Richard Childress Racing, then to foe Gibbs Racing. He has denied those rumors, and Roush Racing president Geoff Smith has noted Biffle's contract is through 2005.
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