January 9, 2010
By Brenda Benedict
Greg Biffle is one of NASCAR's straight shooters and all-round nice guys. I have enjoyed his appearances on This Week in NASCAR, SPEED-TV's weekly show that informs and mostly entertains fans every Monday night. Biffle plays the straight guy for Michael Waltrip's humor. But Biffle is a serious racer who has had good racing seasons at Roush-Fenway Racing.
Greg Biffle would make NASCAR history in the 2010 if he were to win the Cup Championship. He has already won a Truck Series and Nationwide Series Championship. Adding a Cup Championship to his records would make him the first driver to win a championship in all three of NASCAR major series.
But Biffle is coming off a rough season. He posted no wins or no poles in 2009 even though he made the Chase. This was his worst season since he started driving a full Cup season in 2003.
Biffle is now 40 years old. and he stated that relaxing in the off-season really helps charge his batteries for an upcoming race season. However, this year, he is doing more traveling than last year's off-season. When speaking to the press this week, Biffle stated, " Actually, getting some time off does. This off-season I'm doing a little bit more traveling. It's a little busier than it was last year."
Part of the reason for the busy off-season is a desire to get out of the funk the entire Roush-Fenway team experienced last season. Biffle explained, "But we've worked very hard this winter, getting weight out of our cars, getting our cars more center of gravity down, working hard on our data acquisition, trying to understand our modeling better, working on aero."
After taking some time off prior to Christmas, Biffle's team has been gearing up for the new season. Biffle explained, " Since the new year, this week, we've worked really hard, been at the shop every day. We've been in meetings, doing different things. "
"We've got a lot of exciting stuff. You know, we've lightened our cars up, which we feel is going to be important to help get some more ballast in them, get the weight balance correct. You know, we've come up with new geometries, new shock packages, bump-stop stuff. Some of it's been through the merger, some has been through what we've learned. We've worked very, very hard. "
The Roush-Fenway philosophy appears to be making small changes to help the team gain an edge. "All the guys are really, really excited about it. We can't wait to get to the racetrack with our cars. Texas, next week, is going to be our first real true test, our first opportunity to get on the track. "
Hendricks Motorsports has been the team that certainly seems to understand the Car of Tomorrow. I believe their overwhelming dominance of the Cup Series this year was a result of superior technical insight from the Hendricks' team. But it is time for other teams to catch up and begin competing at the top levels. Roush's outlook points to them becoming competitors next season.
The 2009 season was a struggle at Roush-Fenway Racing. They accumulated just three wins in 2009 and put only two drivers into the Chase.
Robbie Reiser, Roush's general manager, recently spoke of what it is going to take to return to the championship form of the past. " "I think we've got a direction to work in. We just got so far behind in a lot of different areas in some ways we've had to go back and start over and try to get this thing pointed in the right direction. We went back and restructured our engineering department. It's gotten so large over the years … so we went back and did some work there."
"Win every race and win the championship. That's basically what you're going to when you have drivers like Carl (Edwards) and Matt (Kenseth) and Greg (Biffle) and even David (Ragan) looking for his first win. We have guys that are more than capable of winning championships so that's what you go after."
Greg Biffle is one of those drivers capable of winning a championship and Roush-Fenway Racing can be the team to help him do that in 2010.
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