Greg Biffle, driver of the No. 16 3M Ford Fusion, was Ford’s highest finisher in the 2009 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series season as he ended up seventh in the final point standings. Biffle recapped the good parts to his season, in addition to what he plans on doing during the off-season.
Greg Biffle - (Photo Credit: Jason Smith/Getty Images for NASCAR)
GREG BIFFLE – No. 16 3M Ford Fusion – HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOUR YEAR? “I’m going to say we had an average year. We came close to winning several times and that’s one positive thing about our season. We came very close at Kansas, California and a few others like Texas and Michigan, so that’s good that we were running competitive enough to get into Victory Lane. The unfortunate part is we weren’t competitive enough all season. We were spotty on being good enough to win and we’ve got to be better than that. We know that. And obviously the highlight of our season was making the chase. We wanted to be in the top five in points. We were, at one point at Homestead, we were in fifth, but with Tony coming back a little bit and Denny winning the race, we lost those two spots and ended up seventh. Overall, it was a satisfactory year. Making the chase is important, but we want to win races and we want to compete for the title.”
WHAT DID YOU LEARN IN SOME OF THOSE RACES YOU ALMOST WON? “You’re always second-guessing yourself in some of those instances like, ‘Should I do two? Should I do four? Is track position going to be more important than the tire? Is there going to be a caution right away? Are we going to go green the rest of the way?’ You’re always thinking of how can I do it different. The other thing is you’re always trying to get every ounce you can. At California, we slid deep in the pit box and I kind of got the guys off-beat a little bit. I was still in the pit box, but we were in really deep and it cost us some time. You look at those things and say, ‘Okay,, I need to be a little bit better, a little bit different.’ We ran out of gas by half-a-lap, so I needed to run a little bit slower at Michigan. You pick up little bits and pieces and try to perfect it, and sometimes you hope it will win you a race.”
WILL HAVING JAMIE GONE NEXT YEAR AND GOING DOWN TO FOUR TEAMS CHANGE ANYTHING? “I don’t believe so. We’ve got a lot of cars running on the race track. We’ve got a lot of data and a lot of information to wade through. I don’t believe losing one car is going to be detrimental, but certainly we have to be better as a group.”
WHAT WILL YOU DO DURING YOUR OFF-SEASON? “I’m a pretty active person and enjoy doing a lot of things. I have some mountain property in the mountains of North Carolina and enjoy spending time up there. I just recently bought a piece of land in West Virginia, kind of recreation land, so I enjoy doing that. I go fishing a little bit. I love to off-shore fish, so I’m looking at getting an opportunity to do that. I might check out Key West this year because they said it’s really good fishing down there. The biggest fish I caught was about a 220-pound blue marlin in Mexico. I used to keep my boat there, but now I’ve moved it to Florida. I think I’m going to keep it at the Carolina coast next year, so that I can use it a little bit more in the vicinity of where we live, but during the winter time I think I’m going to keep it in Key West.”
- PCGCampbell for Ford Racing, Press Release