Biffle Takes Outside Pole for Daytona 500
February 20, 2012
GREG BIFFLE OUTSIDE POLE PRESS CONFERENCE – “The first thing that comes to mind is what a team effort it has been getting these cars prepared and how hard everybody has worked. We’ve got fuel injection and we’ve got all kinds of things that could play factors in qualifying here. One thing is apparent and that is we have good, fast racecars. We were the fastest in both practices and felt like we may have helped the 99 a little bit and pulled a team effort together to get the front row for today, so that’s exciting for us to do that. I remember in 2004, an all-Ford front row with Jack and I on the front row and then Doug Yates with Elliott Sadler in the 38 car, so it kind of felt the same today and, yeah, it’s great to start up front on Sunday.”
JACK ROUSH – “One of the things that is in play in our team, with the dynamics, is the jousting between Matt and Greg is who has been with us longer – the seniority thing. But Greg won the first championship in the Truck Series in 2000 and then two years later he won in the Nationwide Series, so Greg is a champion. He brought us our first championship. It was my embarrassment that I wasn’t able to support him and get him in the Chase last year, but we certainly feel that we’re off to a great start and Greg is committed and he’s motivated and he’s able and I’m glad that he’s on the front row, and I would have been happier if he’d had the pole.”
GREG BIFFLE CONTINUED – WHAT WILL IT TAKE TO AVOID WRECKS ON SUNDAY? “A lot of that is luck and, hopefully, my jar over there that has my luck in it, hopefully, I haven’t used very much of it yet because I missed some big wrecks last night. Every wreck I was right in the middle of and thank goodness I didn’t cause any of them. It’s a matter of paying attention to your surroundings and a lot of it is what position you’re in. That wreck up there with the 24 and the 18, I saw the 18 wrecking on the bottom and Joel was telling me, ‘Get down, get down. Nope, stay up, stay up. Come on, come on.’ He changed his mind three or four times and so did I, and I caught myself watching the 18 car. I thought he was gonna come back across the track, so I’m watching the 18 and I’ve got the gas down and I’m on the brakes and I’ve got the gas down and I’m like, ‘I’m gonna make it,’ and then Joel is telling me, ‘Get to the bottom. Get to the bottom.’ And I looked forward and I see the 24 car is in the air, and I dang near ran right into that wreck because I was watching the 18 come back up the race track at me. So I went from full throttle to skidding the tires again, and then turning down the race track and getting by all that stuff. It’s just paying attention to what’s going on and hopefully nobody is coming at you at that angle. It’s gonna be the same way for the 150s and the 500.”
HOW IS IT WITH NO RADIO COMMUNICATION WITH OTHER DRIVERS? “It’s actually not anymore difficult because we weren’t tandem racing, so I’m not typically gonna be talking to another driver anyway. I was behind that car then that car and that car and that car, so I was never with another car – other than I pushed Kyle to the lead that one time and that was only half-a-lap. Really, it’s kind of a non-issue since the cars are broke apart. Now, if we were tandem racing, I would say we should be talking with each other, but it doesn’t really work out now with the spoiler and all that stuff.”
JACK ROUSH CONTINUED – HOW DO YOU MANAGE THE RISK THAT IS ATTACHED AT THE END OF A RACE? “I’m watching it just like you. You should be asking Greg that question (laughing). The point that’s there is that there’s a limit as to how long the engine can keep its water and there’s a limit as to how long it will go on fuel. As you approach the checkered flag, in a perfect world you would use all of your fuel up and you would use your engine and your water up and just get the checkered flag in time. It is true that these cars are hard to push now. It’s true that they are loose, but I believe it will be the case that the race will be decided, much as it was for the Shootout, I believe it will be decided with two cars that tag up and connect and that are the best two cars running together – not necessarily the best car is gonna win the race, but the best two cars are gonna have a chance to do it. No, I think the best two cars will win the race, but I don’t think they’ll spend that much time doing it throughout the race, which was one of the criticisms that I think fans had.”
GREG BIFFLE CONTINUED – “You’re exactly right. You’re right up the alley. We could beat this horse to death, but the facts are that the fans kind of spoke out and wanted to see these cars back in a larger pack and I think NASCAR wanted to see that as well, and the drivers were about half in half, so they started implementing things to try and break them apart. I think lowering the back bumper another two inches really keeps the cars apart now because I can have a run at that car in front of me and I’m like, ‘Well, I’m gonna push him,’ and I get within two feet from him and it’s like I start looking around and look at the gauges to see if the engine is still running because it just stops and then that guy just takes off like he pushed the turbo button. His car just pulls away because that air just pushes his car, so it keeps the cars from being bumper to bumper and driving around all the time. Carl and I tried it yesterday. I pushed Carl to the lead, but it’s hard to stay connect to the car, for one, and, two, it’s gonna overheat. Your question is, ‘What happens?’ Here is typically what happens when a car overheats. It overheats. It blows the water out, which you can see it’s blowing the water out. Then the gauge is flashing red, and then as it continues to get hotter and hotter and hotter, it just starts losing power, so the car starts slowing down, which is a good thing.” WILL IT CAUSE A BIG WRECK? “I’m not saying every engine won’t do that, but most of the time – Jack knows as well as I do – they’ll blow the water out, they’ll start getting hot, it’ll blow a head gasket or it starts losing power. It’s that simple. It just starts expiring. It won’t break like that, so it’ll just start losing power most likely. That’s what happens to them.”
JACK ROUSH CONTINUED – IS THERE MORE SUPPORT FROM FORD? THE RESULTS SEEM BETTER THE LAST YEAR OR TWO? “Well, there’s kind of a new sheriff over there. Jamie Allison got his job two years ago and he’s got his legs under him and is doing a real nice job. Andy Slankard does a nice job. Ford has been really consistent in trying to do the right things for the race teams for a long time, but the team that they’ve got right now, I think, is doing much better than average and they’re getting enough experience now to figure out how to bring the resources of Ford to bear. Two years ago we had an issue with our simulations not doing what they might and then we had to make our changes one at a time. You couldn’t make a wedge change, a bar change and an air-pressure change at the same time. Our simulations work great right now. They are certainly cutting edge and that’s Ford’s contribution and, of course, the FR9 engine has come on and Doug has done a nice job with that. We’ve got it now and actually had it in ARCA yesterday on the pole, and we’ve done well with it. In Nationwide we won a championship last year with Ricky, so it’s kind of a special time for Ford. NASCAR is committed to have everybody on the same template package as far as air is concerned, so that means the nuances and small things you do with the four-tenths scale model and the things you do maybe with CFD and the computer simulations are important and Ford is behind us on all that and they’re doing a great job. You’re not wrong in saying that Ford has really stepped up.”
GREG BIFFLE CONTINUED – ANY STRATEGY FOR THURSDAY? “Certainly, my primary concern is to protect the racecar. We know we want to start the race with this 500 car because we’ve got a lot of work into it. Secondly, we need to get in competition with this car and see how it drives and see what adjustments we need to make and what we want to do to it. Obviously, starting on the front row or on the pole for that 150, that’s gonna be a good spot and we’ll try to maneuver our way and stay up front. I’m sure at some point we’ll be back in a little bit of traffic, but we don’t want to get back in the back later part of this event three-wide or something -- back where guys are fighting for their life to try and get in the 500. So we want to be coherent and pay attention to that, so we’re gonna race it just like normal, but if something happens and we get in a predicament where we don’t feel comfortable, or I don’t, then I’ll probably ease my way out of that position. But, for the most part, we’re planning on racing it just like normal. I know the crew chief is not super-excited about that, but that’s what we need to do to get this car ready for the 500.”
IS THERE A MORE RADICAL
DIFFERENCE BETWEEN QUALIFYING AND RACE TRIM WITH THIS PACKAGE? “Not so much other than before we used to be able to have qualifying radiators, so we had giant radiators in the car with a ton of water capacity and we could tape the front solid. Some of the cars were taped solid and it makes a heck of a difference on the speed. It’s extremely different on speed, but the problem is the engine will overheat and once it gets that certain temperature, like I talked about, it starts losing power, so then your speed is overcome by the engine losing power and you have a chance of hurting it and not being able to race the 150 without an engine change, and then you’ve got to start in the back. There are differences now, and a lot of times the water you see coming out is just the expansion tank, the water getting to 250 and not having enough air gap. It’ll make itself a little bit of room by puking just a little bit of water, and we see that a lot of times qualifying at different places.”
LOOSE CARS AND BLOCKING. ARE YOU CONCERNED ABOUT THOSE TWO THINGS? “Take and replay the 2004, 2005, 2006 with the old car and it’s exactly the same with cars sliding all over the place. They don’t slide now near as bad as they used to before they repaved it. Before they repaved it, man, you were death grip on the steering wheel constantly. Nobody in here knows what that used to be like, except for us that were inside that car. I mean, the thing would almost spin out by yourself in a qualifying lap, and now you could drive with one finger because the track has so much grip. So anytime in history that you’ve tried to push a car, and Carl and I know this very well, and so does Jack – Talladega 2008, I think – Carl tried to push me out to the front, we were almost to the lead and he was maybe three feet down on my left side and tried to push me in the middle of the corner just a little bit at Talladega and we spun out and it wrecked all of our cars. That’s what I saw last night and in practice when Tony pushed on the 51 car, when Kurt moved up and spun him out. When these other guys pushed on the 20, the car in the middle of the corner and it wasn’t square on his bumper, they’re gonna spin them out. We’re going around the corner. The car has a lot of g-forces on it and if you push it in the wrong spot it’s gonna spin out. My car drives pretty stable. I know a lot of guys have said that their cars are loose. Like David Ragan was in front of me last night and his car was so loose I was glad I was not driving it, but my car, on the other hand, was stuck to the race track like glue. My car, I could drive anywhere. Yeah, when Kyle was pushing me I was white-knuckling it because it just pushes the back of the car around. I don’t know how you fix that. Right now, I think the balance is pretty good on driveability and how long you can push each other. For what NASCAR was going for – to see more of the big pack racing – I think the balance right now is pretty good. Let’s face it, when you saw big packs like that and it was always a five or six-car wreck minimum. That’s just a fact. Unless one guy spins off to the bottom like the 15 did. When you’re bunched up like that and one guy wrecks, you’re gonna see six guys in it.”
