Greg Biffle says remove Talladega from the Chase
FORT WORTH, Texas — A few days after car owner Jack Roush suggested that NASCAR allow drivers to drop one race of their choosing from the Chase For The Sprint Cup, Greg Biffle offered a different idea on Friday: Remove Talladega from NASCAR’s playoff.
“I’d rather say take Talladega out of the Chase and not worry about trying to get rid of your worst race,” Roush Fenway Racing’s Biffle said at Texas Motor Speedway, site of Sunday’s Dickies 500. “The same thing has happened every year at Talladega. When you go in there and you penalize a team that’s worked as hard as all of us have, and it was none of our doing, [but] we’re involved in a wreck because something happened – a guy cut a tire or whatever. Put Bristol in [the Chase] or something else versus throwing out one of your bad finishes. That’s my opinion about what they should do with the Chase.”
With Hendrick Motorsports’ Jimmie Johnson holding a whopping 183-point lead over Roush Fenway’s Carl Edwards and Biffle another two points back in third with three races remaining after last Sunday’s event at Atlanta, Roush suggested that NASCAR allow each of the 12 Chase drivers to discard a race from their Chase record in future seasons. Under such a scenario, there would still be 10 Chase races, but only nine would count toward the final point tally. Theoretically, the plan would help circumvent what Johnson has done this year: build a nearly insurmountable lead down the season’s final stretch, rendering the championship race little more than a foregone conclusion.
But Biffle believes that replacing Talladega, which has hosted a Chase race since the inception of the playoff format in 2004, would be a better alternative than the so-called Chase “mulligan” that Roush proposed. That’s because Talladega – the only restrictor-plate track in Chase – can hurt a driver’s title chances if he is involved in the familiar big wreck that often results from the track’s close-quarters restrictor-plate racing.
Not everyone concurs with Biffle’s solution, though.
“I don’t buy that theory,” Richard Childress Racing’s Jeff Burton said. “It is without a doubt the most volatile race in the Chase, but so what? Some of it is luck - there’s no question about it. ... But it is what it is. I understand how you could have that feeling, but it is the same for everybody.”
Biffle understandably would like to see his Talladega finish purged from his record after being involved in a multicar accident there earlier this month that wasn’t of his own making. The wreck, which led to a 24th-place finish, cost Biffle valuable championship points. Johnson missed the wreck and finished ninth. With their respective results, Johnson earned 47 more points than Biffle.
“[Johnson] skinned through Talladega by the skin of his teeth,” Biffle said. “He just slipped through there. We all saw the wreck. We all saw him dodge the bullets and get through it.”
Biffle concedes that Talladega isn’t the only bullet that Johnson has dodged in the Chase, however.
“They were in huge trouble at Charlotte,” the driver of the No. 16 Ford said. “He could not get that car to drive to save his life. They threw the kitchen sink at it, and he ended up sixth, but you listen to the radio transmissions that they had and you look at how the car was going on the race track, and one more lap, we were going to pass him and four more laps four more guys were going to pass him.
“He was backing up like mad, so that’s what makes a championship team, is taking that adverse day and turning it into something good, and they did the same thing at Atlanta.”
Whether Talladega remains a part of the Chase or not in years to come, Biffle doesn’t think that there should be any significant overhauls to the playoff format just to ensure that Johnson or another driver doesn’t build a sizable cushion and run away with the title.
“You can’t make a rule to keep one guy from winning the championship,” Biffle said. “That’s never worked in our sport, and this is an equal opportunity right here. No matter what you do, you cannot change – in this country, one guy is going to have more money than the other guy, and one guy is going to win more races than the other guy, and one guy is going to win more championships.
“There’s nothing that we can put in place, unless we make the 48 car [Johnson] have a different weight at the start of the event or run different tires or something.”
