Greg Biffle Gives Candid Interview on Tonight’s NASCAR Race Hub
But Biffle, driver of the No. 16 3MWraps.com Ford, felt his team should have been in a similar spot last year as well. Tonight, he gave a candid and revealing interview to NASCAR Race Hub host Steve Byrnes, who talked about a 2011 season loaded with missed opportunities. Here’s a portion of what Biffle said on tonight’s “All Access" segment;
Byrnes: Let’s talk about last year a little bit. I think it’s another reason why you’re guys were so emotional. Not pointing fingers, but there were some races that you guys really threw away.
Biffle: Yeah. There was. It hurts when you have the fastest car, and it’s clear that you have the fastest car… and you fubar it, you screw it all up, somehow. We did that at several of them. Then there was a few that was out of our control. I mean the Coca-Cola 600 (Charlotte Motor Speedway). I’m standing there holding the trophy, I mean I’m this far from the white flag and Jimmie Johnson blows up. We have to do green-white-checker, and we didn’t have enough fuel. We had enough fuel to make the end of the race, we measured it after the race and we could have made it – if the caution wouldn’t have come out. Kasey Kahne ran out on the start. Dale (Earnhardt) Jr. ran out coming off of (turn) four. Kevin Harvick won it, (and he) was running eighth or something. And our name not even mentioned. We weren’t even a factor. There were so many races that happened like that. Some, out of our control, but a majority of them within our control, but just did not pan out.
Byrnes: You and I laughed about it last year, but it almost became a comedy of errors when you guys had all the fueling problems. In retrospect, why was that such a huge hindrance to you guys last year?
Biffle: A few things happened to us. One is we were building an apparatus to fuel the car, better than the stock one, that you could buy off the shelf. What we did as a company was we didn’t practice with the stock one. We were going to wait until we get our “fandaggled" one done and we were going to practice with (that) one. So, we were unprepared when the season started. We had failures up until 10 to 15 races in. Sometimes they go unnoticed because if your short five gallons of gas and (a) caution comes out 17 laps into a run, you got your bacon saved. We got our bacon saved…
Byrnes: So you’re saying that the problem was actually worse than everybody even knew.
Biffle: Yes. The 17 (Matt Kenseth) had a lot of issues too. They were the lucky… he had the golden horseshoe. The 17 was in our position several times, and it never caught him. He had to pit early, it would cycle through, and a caution would come out. Or, caution would come out beforehand. We were unprepared as a company, and as a team, with that fueling thing. Today, I feel like we are better than our competition. We were unprepared; now, we’re in a better position than the other teams are. That’s what we needed.