Roush Fenway Racing's Greg Biffle looks to end winless skid at Homestead
Roush Fenway Racing's Greg Biffle currently has a 43-race winless skid in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series. // Chuck Yadmark, NASCAR Scene
HOMESTEAD, Fla. – Since joining NASCAR’s Cup series full time in 2003, Greg Biffle hasn’t gone a season without winning a race. That could be about to change.
Unless Biffle wins Sunday’s Ford 400 at Homestead-Miami Speedway, he will be shut out of victory lane a whole year for the first time. The good news is that Biffle boasts a spectacular record at Homestead, having won three times in seven starts at the south Florida facility.
Will he make it No. 4 on Sunday and continue his streak of going to victory lane at least once every year since joining NASCAR’s top series?
That’s certainly what Biffle wants. Anything less would be a major disappointment.
“It makes me hurt to think about how many we’ve come close to [winning] – running out of gas at Michigan, and stopping on the air hose at California even though we were still in the pit box, so we probably gave that one up,” the Roush Fenway Racing driver said. “There’s been about four or five. Kansas, we took four tires instead of two and the 14 [car of Tony Stewart] beat us.
“It’s been very difficult. But they’re not easy to win, either, and it would be very disappointing to go a season without winning a race since I’ve been able to win every year.”
Biffle’s last triumph came 44 races ago, on Sept. 21, 2008, at Dover International Speedway. That win was preceded by a victory in the previous week’s race at New Hampshire Motor Speedway.
But 2008 has been disappointing for Biffle and his Greg Erwin-led team despite making NASCAR’s Chase For The Sprint Cup and being in contention for wins on several occasions.
Biffle hopes to rekindle the magic this weekend that helped him go undefeated at Homestead from 2004 to 2006.
“It’s important for us to try and win this last race of the season,” Biffle said. “You know, we’ve been able to do it three years in a row, a few years back. It’s important for a team and a sponsor to do that. We certainly would like to be fifth in points and it’s looking a little grim for us right now.
“We have to gain a couple of spots and we’d need some extraordinary stuff, but the 48 team [of Jimmie Johnson] has been extremely good and we all know it, and we’re just trying to figure out how to compete on their level.”
In addition to craving a win, Biffle also wanted to be a serious contender for his first series title this season. That hasn’t happened, however, as the Vancouver, Wash., native has notched just two top-fives in the nine races that have been run since NASCAR’s 10-race championship-determining segment commenced.
Biffle enters this weekend’s season finale seventh in the standings and has a mathematical chance of climbing as high as third. Finishing fifth is a more likely possibility - he’s just 36 points behind fifth-place Tony Stewart.
It’s a win that Biffle wants more than anything, though.
He starts eighth at Homestead.
“Unfortunately, I’ve got one chance left, and that’s here on Sunday,” he said. “You’ve got a pretty good idea that you’ve got an opportunity to win on Friday, and right now we’re just going to have to be better [on Saturday] than we were [Friday] in order to win on Sunday.
“We need a little bit more speed. So, we’re just going to continue to work on this thing a little bit, get the top groove figured out. We could be a threat to win on Sunday, for sure.”
