Greg Biffle finished the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series 2009 season in seventh place. (Photo: LAT Photographic)
Without a single competitive lap turned yet, already 2010 is shaping up to be a historic year in NASCAR. And one of the guys hoping to make some history of his own is Greg Biffle, driver of the No. 16 Roush Fenway Racing Ford Fusion.
While either Jimmie Johnson or Jeff Gordon can make history by claiming his fifth Sprint Cup title in 2010, Biffle will enter the record books if he wins his first: The Washington native already owns NASCAR Camping World Truck and Nationwide Series titles, and a Sprint Cup crown would make him the only driver with championships in all three of NASCAR’s top divisions.
First, though, there’s the little matter of finding some extra speed. All through 2009, it was obvious that the Roush Fenway fleet was just a bare tick behind the Hendrick Motorsports squad — not by a lot, mind you, but by enough that Biffle finished seventh in points while Hendrick drivers swept the top three positions.
Over the winter, Biffle said, engineers from Ford Motor Co. and Roush are working furiously to make up the difference. And he’s also hoping that the switchover from Dodge to Ford for the four-car Richard Petty Motorsports squad will help, too.
“We’ve worked very hard this winter getting weight out of our cars, getting the center of gravity down, lightening them, working hard on our data acquisition and trying to understand our modeling better – working on aero,” said Biffle.
Helping lower the weight of the cars before ballast is added to bring them up to the 3,450-pound weight limit is a new Ford engine this year, which is lighter and has a lower center of gravity. And its improved cooling system is said to allow teams to run more tape on the nose, which should improve front-end downforce and handling.
Biffle said he’s happy with the information the Roush Fenway squad already has gleaned from its new quasi-teammates at RPM, who work out of shops adjacent to Roush Fenway headquarters in Concord, N.C.
