Top 35 2009 NASCAR Sprint Cup drivers: No. 7 - Greg Biffle
Roush Fenway Racing's Greg Biffle finished seventh in the final 2009 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series standings. // James Rapp, NASCAR Scene
Greg Biffle’s 2009 Sprint Cup season was fairly forgettable compared with his 2008 campaign in NASCAR’s top series.
While Biffle qualified for the Chase For The Sprint Cup and finished seventh in the points, he failed to win a race.
Billed as a preseason championship contender after finishing third in the 2008 standings and winning twice, the Roush Fenway Racing driver never seemed to quite get over the hump to become a top performer this past season.
He posted 16 top-10s but finished no better than third, which he did three times. Biffle and his Greg Erwin-led team were only in serious contention to win on a few occasions, most notably in the June race at Michigan, where he ran out of gas while leading on the last lap.
Biffle was the highest finishing Roush Fenway driver in the standings but missed out on victory lane for the first time in his seven full Cup seasons. He collected $6,245,882 in race earnings.
During the offseason, SceneDaily is taking a look at the top 35 in 2009 NASCAR Sprint Cup driver points. Here’s how Biffle’s season unfolded:
By the numbers: Biffle recorded 16 top-10s, 10 of them top-fives, in 36 starts. He finished seventh in the standings, 43 points behind fifth-place Denny Hamlin. The Vancouver, Wash., native had an average starting position of 13.9 and an average finishing position of 14.0. He completed 97.6 percent of all laps while recording just two DNFs. Biffle spent 551 laps out front.
Season highlights: A trio of third-place finishes, which came in the first Texas and Dover races and at Kansas, marked Biffle’s best outcomes of the season on the Cup side. He scored two victories – one at Las Vegas, the other at Phoenix – in a part-time Nationwide Series schedule for Roush Fenway.
Key setbacks: Biffle opened the season with four finishes of 20th or worse in the first six events and went three weeks without a top-15 finish in the Chase. In between those droughts, Biffle endured a four-week stretch in the summer during which he finished no better than 18th.
Newsworthy moment: Biffle was involved in a controversy with Joey Logano and Logano’s father’s, Tom, at the fall Nationwide race at Auto Club Speedway in California. Tom Logano had his NASCAR annual credential pulled for gesturing at Biffle after the race in which his son made contact with Biffle on the track. Logano’s team thought that the contact was intentional, but Biffle accused the Loganos of having “short memories,” recalling a bump from Logano in the previous week’s Nationwide race at Kansas.
In his words: “To be honest, it wasn’t a good as I hoped it would be,” Biffle said of his season, “but we did make the Chase, which is every driver’s goal. I feel like we have one of the best, if not the best, pit crews on pit road, and that is a good feeling. I think that we’re obviously off as an organization.”
