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CUP: Biffle Ready For Title Run
Written by: Tom Jensen   
01/06/2008 - 07:00 PM
Daytona Beach, Fla.
 
Greg Biffle speaks to the media during NASCAR testing at Daytona. (Sam Greenwood/Getty Images for NASCAR Photo) » More Photos


In 2005, a dropped lugnut at the fall Texas race was all that stopped Greg Biffle from becoming the first driver in NASCAR history to earn championships in all three of the sport's top divisions. Biffle ended 2005 just 35 points behind Tony Stewart and appeared poised for continued title runs.

But a disappointing 2006 season and wretched start to 2007 had the Roush Fenway Racing driver dispirited and rumored to be looking for a new team after his contract expires at the end of '08. Over the last quarter of the 2007 season, though, Biffle and his new crew chief Greg Erwin suddenly seemed to click, producing one victory (Kansas) and two runner-up finishes (Dover and Phoenix) in the final quarter of the season.

And that has the Washington native eager to return to his 2005 form and contend for a championship again in 2008 after two consecutive years of missing the Chase for the Nextel Cup.

That's a far cry from how Biffle felt last summer, when Roush Fenway fell badly behind in development of what was known as the Car of Tomorrow. "We went to Loudon, New Hampshire for the first race and we were the slowest car there," Biffle said of the July 2007 race in New England. "We were 49th on the sheet. Obviously, somebody's got to be the slowest car, but it was frustrating for me. It's a race track I almost won at and got in the top five nearly every time I'd been there that it was frustrating. … I was the worst car there and the slowest car there. I never felt like that in my life."

But as he and Erwin began to click, things got better, in a relative hurry. "From the beginning of the season to the end of the season we made great strides in our performance and that was a big confidence builder, and then we went to Dover and finished second to Carl (Roush Fenway Racing teammate Edwards)," said Biffle. "So that was a huge boost and then we went to Phoenix and maybe with five or six more laps we might have been able to run down the 48 car (race-winner Jimmie Johnson). Those three COT
races were the last three that we've run, so the last time we were in that race car we got second and potentially could have won the race. That's big confidence. At the beginning of the season we were horrible. I think we'll all admit it. We weren't even close and at the end of the season we weren't where we needed to be, but we were certainly a heck of a lot better. I look forward to starting off this season, hopefully, with where we left off last year."

For Erwin, too, he could see the change as the season wore on. "It's been pretty well documented that the Roush group was a little bit slow to get going at the start of the season, but there has been a huge effort on the part of everybody there to pull together," said the crew chief. "We do a lot of team testing and sharing of ideas and kind of delegation of each of the five teams working on certain areas and pull all of our information together. The ball really kind of got going about midway through last year."

The improved communication with Erwin and the team's ability to come to grips with NASCAR's new-generation race car, plus Biffle's late-season win at Kansas, have the driver fired up about his 2008 prospects.

"I won't lie to you, we all moan and groan about having to come back to work and having to come back to Daytona today, but part of you enjoys the time off and wants to continue to do that, but the other part of me is I'm eager to get back at it and get back in the race car and get back going again," Biffle said Monday at Daytona. "It's just the reality of it. We'd all like to have a couple more weeks or a couple more months or whatever, but I think deep down inside we're all excited about getting back going and testing at Daytona – getting the season started again."

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