 | | Greg Biffle finished 12th in points in 2006. Credit: Rusty Jarrett/Getty Images |
Press Release
January 11, 2007
01:05 PM EST (18:05 GMT)
Q: What's the outlook for this year's Daytona 500? Biffle: I think pretty good. Both the AmeriQuest 16 cars are running well. We've got a third car here today we haven't run yet, we are getting ready to run it after the lunch break. That's going to be our Bud Shootout car, at least we're hoping to if it runs decent. We've picked a car for the 500 and we are going to work on some more drafting [Wednesday] afternoon and found a little speed in it and it's encouraging. The car handles fairly well, so we are excited about that. We've got one car that seems like its real fast by itself in qualifying. It's the car that has the least downforce and we feel like we're going to save it for the first Talladega race. We feel like we've accomplished a lot and mapped out a lot of things here so far. Q: Is testing a waste of time for two weeks? Can this all be done in half a day or do you even need to come down here in January? Biffle: I think certainly we need to come down here. We really could get everything done in two days. With the way the rules package is now, it's kind of closing the doors, it's kind of confining it a little bit. We are sort of running out of stuff to do. What we figured out over the years is you unload it off the truck and you work on it for the first half of the day. You pretty much find the speed you're going to find for the next three days. It's kind of polished on a little bit, and some of the changes end up being so small. This whole [Wednesday] morning session, the wind picked up, meaning we try to change and when it's slower we try another change and when it's slower, we go back to the original change and it was about in the middle of those two. So we really don't know what it did. So it gets difficult when the conditions start getting windy. The biggest change, the most speed we found is back at the race shop on what they call a k-rig or squat rig which pulls the car down. We are changing a bunch of things back and forth and we found a few things that seem to be better and we put them on the car [Tuesday] morning and picked up about a tenth of a second, a solid tenth and a half. It was definitely a good change for us. Pat and I are talking about it, we almost feel like we could find more speed by going to work on that all day because it's consistent. It's in a controlled environment. Of course out here the humidity changes and things like that. It makes it more difficult in actual conditions. But certainly we need to come down here to see how the car is running and handling is a big thing. For us, we could do single car runs for a day, for a day and a half, and do drafting for the second half of the day and we would be ready to go. I think it will help the new teams, more than anything, the three days. Q: How's your arm doing? Biffle: My shoulder is doing fairly well. I was a little nervous coming down here about how it was going to be inside the car; not driving the car but reaching everything; reaching over, getting the helmet hook and trying to hook up the things behind your head that are hard to get. It seems to be the reach and range of motion is the biggest thing that hurts your shoulder. Q: At the end of last year you were talking so much about how you needed Jack to see what needed to be done with the cars. Did you get any of that accomplished during the off season that will lead into this year? Biffle: We sat down and talked about it. It was funny, I was in a meeting about three weeks ago and they said, everybody is building their cars like this with this nose offset and this is what we've determined. And then I get back from vacation and it's like, nobody's building their cars there. Everybody is building them like this. So it's kind of funny. It's a revolving door. We're constantly building stuff and testing it or taking it to the wind tunnel. And this year, this winter we've done more on track things. We've been to Kentucky, we went to Las Vegas, I know they went to Lakeland. So we are doing some on-track stuff as well, trying to figure out some things and wind tunnel to back it up. I think every decision we're making is pretty educated. I think we'll be ready to go. I'm sure the Vegas test is going to help us really pinpoint exactly what we want. Q: Talk about the change in crew chief and what that does? Biffle: I think it's a real momentum builder for a team. I hate to talk about our crash in Las Vegas, but that really was a big event. It was a really big crash, and it was our first test together. It was our first time together as a team. Everybody is excited about being there. Our test was going extremely well. I feel like that really set us back a bunch, that unfortunate incident. We are definitely coming back from that incident, but we're really working well together. I like all of the guys. We're figuring out a lot of stuff and when we get to some of these other places, Bristol certainly will be a place we get scrambling and these first couple of races, the California and Vegas test. I think the team is coming to the really well and I like Pat and the way he executes things. Q: It's pretty common for people to attribute Jimmie Johnson's success to his team and the resources; does his driving get overlooked because of the supporting cast he has around him? Biffle: Well, certainly it's a team effort and he's included in that team. It takes everyone. It takes a driver and it takes a crew chief, it takes a bunch of engineers and it takes a lot of resources and it takes great engines. It takes everything. I haven't kept up on everything that's been said but it seems like he's got the recognition he deserves. Certainly he's been in the Chase every year and after the way the Chase started for him, I kind of counted him out personally because they were down there a few times and then they got in that crash at Talladega. A lot of bad things happened to them. But certainly they were championship form, never gave up and kept fighting back. Q: Under the new format, if it did expand to 12 or more, you make the Chase. What are your thoughts on the possible expansion? Biffle: I applaud NASCAR on what they did for the Chase. I disliked the Chase format in the beginning. I had won two championships under the old format and thought, why change something that works and puts on a good race. After they changed it, I thought it was great. It worked very well. I liked it and I like the way it is. I like it with ten drivers. You have to limit it down to a certain number of people, and I think that they did a good job. And just like the Car of Tomorrow car, not a big fan of it right now. I like what we are doing. I like these race cars we race now. But you know, once we get in there and get racing, it might be different. I don't think anybody likes change until they have gotten a chance to get in there and do it. I like the way they have formatted the Chase. If they expanded it to 12, I really don't feel like it's going to change it to be perfectly honest with you. I don't know where the winners have come from in the Chase so far, how far back or what the stats are. But if we would have made the Chase this year, we never would have won the championship. So the facts are, the guys probably in the top five or six are the ones that really, ultimately have a strong chance of winning the title unless some fluke thing happens to them. I still think if you expanded it to 15, the championship guy is going to come out of that top six spots. Q: What does it mean for teams and sponsors to expand and will 12 be enough? Will it be better to have 17, 18 for sponsors? Biffle: I guess you can go back and recalculate the points and do all the configuring and recalculating you want to. But if you put all the drivers, all 43 cars in the Chase and gave them the five points in between them, the champion would be the same guy every year. So it's not going to matter -- I'm not saying that for sure, I haven't done the math on it, but I would be willing to put a little bit of money on it; that champion is going to be the same guy. So, yes, it's going to give some of those other cars promotion, but we can fix that, also, by persuading the media or the television to cover a little bit more than just the Chase in those last 10 races. I don't have a problem with expanding the Chase to 12, but now there's going to be 12 guys we talk about. There's still going to be somebody left out. Q: Is there anything special that you can do with your team in regards to trying to get back the success that you've had in the past? Biffle: You know, success comes from really, really good race cars, really fast race cars, as good as or better than everybody else. That's where it comes from. I try my hardest every week. We are going to go to California and try to win and if we have a race car we can win with, we will win the race. A lot of it depends on the car. You take these top 20 drivers and a lot of us, like Denny Hamlin at Pocono. He was not a light years better driver than all 43 guys. Yes, he did a fantastic job driving those cars, but their car worked very well at that racetrack. They brought the same car back that won both races. There's something to the race car itself along with the driver and the combination of it all. But it certainly takes that race car to handle well, turn, and have plenty of downforce and all that. So that is what all of us work on all the time, all the teams, and if we can hit on something that makes our cars handle and get down on the racetrack and run well, that's what it takes to win five or six races. Kasey Kahne's team hit on that last year. They hit on something that was working for them and they perfected it and kept working on it and the results showed. Tony Stewart did as well up in the Chase. They won those mile-and-a-halves just bang, bang, bang and they got a combination that was working for them. It's constantly a moving target, and the minute you can get your finger on it, try to keep it on it as long as you can, because that sucker keeps moving. That's what it takes to win races and championships. Q: How do you expect the group that you now have together ensure you can make the Chase this year? Biffle: Well, certainly it's going to be a challenge. Te race cars we are building now, we are technically starting from scratch. Every race car we are building is pretty much new. I don't think we are going to end up with any of the six cars from last year. Keep in mind, we have all of those Car of Tomorrow races. Nobody knows what that's going to do to any [team], who is going to be competitive, who isn't. So that's going to be a big upset. I think a lot revolves around us getting our cars handling well and showing up and being competitive every week, and then figuring out that COT thing as fast as we can. That's going to be the two keys for us making the Chase. I think I have the team to do it and I have the crew chief and all of the people in place. It's just we need to make sure we run competitively at California and Las Vegas and all of these places, that our race cars are fast. Hopefully we get this COT thing really scienced out well. I feel we are probably behind on that compared to the other teams; mostly I would have to say to Hendrick's. I think they look like they are a little bit further along than a lot of guys. They may have dedicated a team of people to getting there. Pat and I are going to Rockingham with a COT car to try to learn some things about them, bump stops and all of the things that are new on them, because we are going to race them at Darlington. But those are going to be key to making the Chase -- running well with that COT car and getting our downforce cars to handle good. | 
