Of Cracking Top 10
Greg Biffle, driver of the No. 16 National Guard Taurus, has had two months to savor his win at Homestead-Miami Speedway in the final race of 2004. Biffle, who sat on the pole for last year’s Daytona 500, spoke about the upcoming season prior to the third day of testing at Daytona International Speedway.
GREG BIFFLE – No. 16 National Guard/Subway Taurus – YOU GENERALLY ONLY HAVE FOUR OR FIVE DAYS TO ENJOY A WIN, BUT YOU’VE HAD TWO MONTHS. “Yeah, I’ll be the most recent winner until the checkered flag at the 500, so that’s pretty exciting. We’ve been thinking about that over the winter. It’s kind of kept the guys energized and kept the whole 16 team fired up about coming back here. We got the pole at the 500 last year, so we’re thinking about that. We’re in the Bud Shootout this year, so we’re excited. We’re ready to get the season started. We’ve done some testing over at Kentucky and we just can’t wait to get going.”
YOU FEEL PRETTY CONFIDENT ABOUT MAKING THE CHASE THIS YEAR, DON’T YOU. “Yeah, I really do. I think we have the tools it takes and the cars that it takes. We’ve got some new faces here at the test and I’m hoping that won’t affect us any as far as getting off to a good start because chemistry is a lot of it and it takes a good, solid team. We lost a couple of good guys who went to pursue some other opportunities, so hopefully we’ll be able to fill those voids with good people and not miss a beat.”
WERE THERE ANY AREAS YOU FELT NEEDED IMPROVEMENT FROM LAST YEAR? “Not really. I felt that we just needed to polish on what we had and just learn together and keep growing as a group. That was kind of broken up. We lost our tire guy and head mechanic that worked hand-in-hand with the car chief. They really worked some magic together and were really integrated, so that’s gonna take a little bit to get that chemistry back.”
YOU QUALIFIED WELL MOST OF THE YEAR, BUT THINGS SEEMED TO HAPPEN ON RACE DAY. ANYTHING YOU CAN PUT YOUR FINGER ON? “The thing was we always ran well, but we never finished well. Once we got the finishing part down and once we started to realize some of the things that were happening to us, like losing the handle on the race track and things, we got better and fixed those type of issues and the helped us the last half of the year. We posted a couple of wins and had a fourth at Pocono and a sixth at Indy, so we started to make progress toward the front.”
HOW HAS YOUR TEST BEEN SO FAR? “Awesome. I couldn’t be happier. It’s funny because each year we get better coming here and it wasn’t like that before. I dreaded coming here and just hated Speedweeks because we weren’t competitive. Nobody wants to come and race when you’re not competitive. Last year we were like 10th to 14th in preseason testing and I was really excited because we were always 34th or 28th and worrying about making it on time with the way the qualifying procedure was and now we’re third. We have one car that’s third and one car that’s fourth. We have never had two cars that quick and so close to each other. You look at everybody’s sheet and you’ve got one car here and one car is about 10 spots down. Just about everybody in the garage is like that, except for two or three teams and, surprisingly enough, we’re one of the teams that has our cars right on top of each other. We’re happy about that. We’re ready to get in drafting trim. We don’t care anymore about this qualifying stuff. We want to find out what car drives better so I can say, ‘That’s my 500 car and that’s my Bud Shootout car.’ Then we can be able to work from there on getting them ready for qualifying and the races.”
DID YOU HAVE TO TAKE THE SPEEDWAY TOUR TO GET USED TO THE NEW INFIELD HERE AT THE SPEEDWAY? “I was here for the 24-Hour test and it’s kind of funny. We were in the garage and it was all foreign to me. The garage looked different. The prototype car is all different and I never even gave it a thought that this was the Nextel Cup garage. I’m thinking, ‘This is the prototype garage.’ Then somebody asked me what I thought about the garages and it’s like, ‘I’ve never been in here before.’ Then it suddenly dawned on me that I was standing in the Cup garage and that they had just gotten them finished, so it’s neat.”
Dale Jarrett, driver of the No. 88 UPS Taurus, came into the media center during a rain delay in testing for the Daytona 500 to discuss a number of issues going into the 2005 season-opener.
DALE JARRETT – No. 88 UPS Taurus – WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT THE INFIELD CHANGES AT DIS? “I didn’t know where I was and still haven’t figured all of this out. Thank goodness Penny (Copen) has been able to lead me around to most places. Like Kyle Petty said when we were talking about it last night, I was glad when I got on the race track because that hasn’t changed and I knew where I was at that time. It’s incredible what’s been done in here in what I consider a short amount of time with everything that has taken place. I think the fans that have the opportunity to come down in here and view all of this are gonna be very impressed and excited about that. It should be fun and interesting to see how all of this goes. As far as the race track goes, it’s the same old track. Obviously we have a little change with the patch down in one. I don’t know how that’s gonna affect when we get out in race trim and do a little drafting. I don’t see it being a problem or anything. The testing has gone well so far. I’m pleased that some of the things we’ve worked extremely hard on with these cars – we literally started building back in September of last year and had them in the wind tunnel quite a bit – and of the three pages of things we wanted to try to get through here at the test, and obviously you don’t ever get through all of that, but the things we saw that might be beneficial from the wind tunnel have actually translated into some speed here on the race track, so that’s always nice when that happens. Many times you come here and you make change after change after change and you get across the start-finish line and you look at the timer on that second lap and you’re saying, ‘Just show me something a little different.’ The last time you ran a 48.90, this time you ran a 48.89 or a 48.91 or .93. You see the same numbers and you want to think it’s stuck, but we’ve been fortunate to see some gains. We may make three or four runs and not see anything happening much, but then we do find one thing that picks us up half-a-tenth or a tenth and that’s a big gain out here. So it’s been kind of a fun test.”
WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON RUSTY AND MARK IN THEIR FINAL YEAR? “Both of those guys have had great careers. They’ve meant a lot to this sport. The only thing aside from losing two good friends out here that are my age and we have things in common to talk about would be the questions that come at me now about when I’m gonna retire because we’re basically the same age. My answer to that is I started later than they did, so I’m gonna try to drive a little longer than what they are, but I wish them both the best in their last year. When you see that happening to two good guys, and obviously Terry is cutting back too. Those people have meant a lot to this sport and you’d like to see them have a lot of success here to go out on a good note.”
CAN YOU REFLECT ON THE POINT SYSTEM? “I’ll be talking a different tune than I was last year. I’m not sure if this is the chair, but it was in a place similar to this last year when I was totally against it and expressed those feelings. Myself and others, that changed after we saw what was going on with it – the amount of exposure that it brought to our sport – the attention – the excitement. Those races, starting probably at race 15 of the season through that 26th race was just incredible. There was as much excitement and pressure there as what I ever remember racing for a championship when I won in ’99 and racing for championships a few other years. It was just amazing. How could you argue with something. I wasn’t part of those last 10 races as far as racing for the championship, but how can you argue with something that came down to the final lap of the final race and having any one of three guys having a chance to win the championship. My hats off to Brian France and George Pyne and those people that made that most difficult decision and make that huge change – to have the foresight to see that that type of finish could be a real possibility. I think it’s great. I’m literally for it now. I think that it’s brought a level of excitement to our sport that we haven’t seen in a long time. The coverage that everyone got in those last 10 races was just amazing. I don’t know if they have any changes planned, but if it’s anything like that, I’ll be for that too probably.”
WHERE DO YOU THINK YOUR SKILLS ARE FROM A DRIVING STANDPOINT? “Obviously, something has to change there as time goes on, but I’m not sure where that comes in. I think that it may be different with different people. As far as myself, I think that physically I’m definitely in better shape than when I started this back in my thirties. That part of it I’m not concerned with. I still see well and I still enjoy this so much that I don’t think there’s any part of me physically that is keeping me from winning races or competing weekly in a good way. I’m not sure when that will come. I’m sure there will be something that will make that light go on in me that says, ‘OK, it’s time you stop doing this.’ I think that certainly there is a lot to be said for experience when you get to be this age that you can maybe look at things and do things a little bit differently. I think, as much as anything, you hear people talk about the rigors of the travel and all the appearances we have to do, so I’ve taken a little bit different look at that and tried to approach it a little differently and try to make my schedule more friendly to myself and my family to where it doesn’t wear on my physically in that respect. If anything is gonna wear on me physically, I want it to be the actual racing itself. I don’t see that there’s anything that these young guys that are 20 and 25 and 30 years old, they’re great race drivers and very good talents, but I don’t see anything that makes me, because I’m 48, physically not be able to do the things that they can do. Hopefully, my experience comes in somewhere along the way that will allow me to do things as well if not better than what they can.”
HOW HARD IS IT DETERMINE IF IT’S THE CAR OR YOURSELF WHEN THERE’S A DECLINE IN PERFORMANCE? “That’s the $64,000 question I guess. You try to figure that out, and I’ll use a word that always creates a debate but for lack of a better term, when an athlete gets at this time of his career you start wondering what it is, in particular this sport. Obviously, if it’s a football or baseball player or a basketball player you kind of know that because as much as those are team games, you can see that it’s your skills that may be declining. Here, we have that factor of team and car, so trying to determine which it is in that respect. Now is it the fact that I’m not being able to relate to changes in this sport as much so I’m not being as effective as a driver. Maybe it’s not that my skills have deteriorated, it’s just that I’m not able to give the feedback that I need to with the way the cars have changed, the tires and all that. That’s something you have to weigh on. You think a lot about it. I think a lot more about that now than I ever have, obviously before. In knowing when is gonna be that right time, I think I’ve made this statement before. A lot of people have to make it on their own and it will ultimately be my decision, but I have three very good people in my life that I feel can help me make that decision at the proper time if I’m not able to see it clearly myself. And those would be my car owner, Robert Yates, who has become a great friend to me and someone that I know is totally up front and honest with me and me the same way with him, so we have that type of a relationship. My father, who we discuss everything about my life, so I know he won’t hesitate if he sees something there. And for those of you that have met my wife, Kelley, know that she’s very candid and has never hesitated and won’t hesitate to let me know because she, just like myself, doesn’t want to see me go down that other side. I’ve been very fortunate in the many years I’ve been in this sport to be associated with a lot of good people and teams and have a wonderful career, and I don’t want to slide down that other side. So I think that I can rely on those people and hopefully know when that time is here.”
WHERE DO YOU SEE YOUR TEAM HEADING INTO THE SEASON? “A much better race team, a much better prepared team. Mike has done a really good job. When he came there last year, and he’ll be the first to tell you, that about three or four months into it he was totally overwhelmed at really what he was having to rebuild. He had no idea really when he took the job exactly everything that had taken place there, and maybe more a lack of what hadn’t taken place. Right now, last year going into it I had no idea if we were gonna be a top 25 team, run where we did in 2003, or were we gonna get ourselves back to respectability and that’s what Mike built. Now we have cars sitting in the race shop ready to go testing. We obviously have had a good test here. We have tests at Lakeland, Las Vegas, California and even the two days that we’re off here on Monday and Tuesday during Speedweeks, that we’re actually not on the race track, we’re going back to Lakeland to do some testing with our short track stuff. So we’re pretty intense on making sure that we’re ready when this season starts and I view us right now being a top 10 race team. I think we showed towards the end of the year that we had those capabilities. When we got to race 26, yeah, we didn’t make the top 10 and we weren’t exactly at that time a top 10 team, but we have made improvements and I’m pretty excited about that. I honestly think that if we get started like I think that we are going to, we can show that we can challenge for a championship again and win some races.”
WAS IT A LIFT TO SEE ELLIOTT MAKE THE CHASE? “I think there’s no doubt that. Not only do we get a lift from seeing that, but seeing how they did it and what areas they were working in was a big help to us. Mike is very good at taking the resources that he has around him and putting them to good use and that meant using Todd’s abilities and his engineer, Kevin, to our advantage and they’ve been very good in helping us. So not only watching them, but working closely with them gives us a lot of hope for our race team.”
DO YOU FEEL DECISIONS IN THIS SPORT ARE BASED ON MARKETING AS OPPOSED TO PERFORMANCE? “I think I understand the question, but I think it’s still gonna be a performance-driven sport regardless. You have to perform. In my case of being here for a while, what I’ve done in the past certainly may help in that respect. But these companies that are becoming involved in this sport pay a tremendous amount of money to be a big part of it and they want results. I’m fortunate to be associated with a sponsor that views this, and I’m talking about UPS, views this as an opportunity for them to do a lot of things around our race team and around the races and the different tracks. Anything that we do on the race track is a bonus, so not many people maybe have that luxury of being in the position that I’m in. They do such a great job of marketing this, aside from our performance on the track, that it takes a lot of pressure off of our team to realize that, yeah, we still want to do well because that’s what we’re here to do, but I think that even though some decisions may be made based on who can be marketed better than someone else, it’s still a matter that you have to get the job done. It’s like having a name like Jarrett or Petty or Waltrip or whatever it is. You might have that name, but if you don’t perform that name is not gonna do you a lot of good.”
CAN YOU TALK ABOUT FORD’S POSITIONING IN COMPETING IN THIS SPORT? “I don’t know that I’m speaking exactly for Ford, but what I see is that maybe Ford thinks that the number (of teams) aren’t as important as the quality. If they can put their efforts and resources into a smaller group, that gives them a better chance. Obviously, it’s worked reasonably well. They’ve won the last two championships. Even though we race against the other manufacturers that have quite a few more teams, Ford has gotten to the point that they’ve put a lot more support towards our teams and a lot more engineering staff towards that and I think that’s paying off. I also think the merger between Roush and Robert Yates with the engine program only showed how their efforts are gonna be put forth in the future for this – that we have to work together and use those dollars that Ford is putting towards this racing program towards everyone’s best effort. And if we can do that in a smaller group, then that is gonna make us more successful as a small group.”
WHAT WOULD IT MEAN TO WIN A FOURTH DAYTONA 500 AND DO YOU HAVE EMPATHY FOR RUSTY AND MARK WHO HAVE NEVER WON IT? “Yeah, they obviously both can’t win this last chance for them, but you wouldn’t be upset to see either one of them win. Until you win it, and I’ve been very fortunate again to do it three times, it’s just incredible what it does for your career and the feeling you get, the feeling of accomplishment. I’ve said this a number of times that this race, being our biggest race, we’re the best prepared for this race of any that we go to. We do more wind tunnel testing, more track testing. Everybody is in the best shape that they’re gonna be in. Nobody is injured, so you have the best at their best and when you win, you know that’s a great feeling of accomplishment. I hate that at least one of them isn’t gonna get the opportunity to see what that’s like, but I don’t think that takes anything away from what they’ve accomplished in this sport. I think that they’ll be remembered a lot more for what they’ve done than for what they didn’t accomplish in their career. As far as winning a fourth, gosh I would love to do that. That puts you in a very select group that has made that accomplishment and I think this year might be the opportunity for us to do that. I think that we’ve worked extremely hard. This has always been a focus of Robert Yates Racing, this race here. The last few years, even though we may qualify well, we haven’t seemed to be there when it came time to try to win the race. We’re putting a lot more emphasis on that. Even though we ran fast yesterday, our objective was to get something that we know is gonna drive good, so it would mean a lot to me, especially at this point in time of my career to get that fourth Daytona 500.”
YOU WON THE SHOOTOUT LAST YEAR. WHY DIDN’T THAT CARRY OVER? “When you win that, you have to be a little bit careful in what you say and how you say it. Obviously, I didn’t have the fastest car that night but I put my car in front of the fastest car at the right time, so that helped me to win the Shootout. In all of that excitement and giving that reward to your team for their hard work and efforts, you don’t want to bring them down by saying, ‘Look, this isn’t what this season is gonna be all about right now. We have a lot of work to do.’ Again, we weren’t the fastest car that night, but we ended up in Victory Lane. What needed to be said was that, ‘this is great, it’s great for morale, but we have a lot, a lot of work to do.’ We were trying to build a team back and decide what type of race cars we were even gonna race. Obviously we were gonna race Fords, but what type of chassis we were gonna be running. We didn’t settle on that issue until late May, really. So we were trying to build cars, build two different types of chasses – get to Kentucky to test, wherever we could – and still try to stay focused on the race that we had each and every week, so it was a long process. Even though we showed some signs of improvement the second half of the season and were able to compete at certain types of tracks, we still realize where our weaknesses are, so we’ve put a lot of effort towards that. We saw early in the year that the mile-and-a-half tracks seemed to be our downfall at that time. We weren’t competing well at those places at all, so that’s why we were at Kentucky literally three out of four Tuesdays of every month, getting as many laps as we possibly could – to the point that we got that part of our program very good, except for the mile-and-a-half tracks like Charlotte that are rough and worn out, so we know that we still have work to do in that area. So now we’re concentrating on that part of our program. Obviously, this part of our program we have been concentrating on. We started last year putting a lot of effort into this, but we realize now that short tracks and flat tracks are an area that we really have to deal with, so that’s our emphasis for this year. We weren’t the team that it looked like when we won the Bud Shootout. That saying of things may not always be as they may seem, we had a lot of work to do.”
YOU HAVE A GOOD RELATIONSHIP WITH ELLIOTT. “Friendship. That’s where it starts. I’ve had teammates for quite a few years now and maybe some of the interests outside of just this sport weren’t a lot the same, so that made it a little more difficult that the only thing you ever talked about were the race cars. Even though that’s what we want to do and that’s what we do, you can’t just totally put yourself in this position every single minute of every single day. I talked to Elliott a number of years ago as he started in the Busch Series and even came to Darlington for his first time. We were testing to try and win the Winston Million at that time. We got in a car and I took him around and showed him and basically told him what Harry Gant had done with me a number of years ago. We kind of struck up a friendship at that time and it’s carried over. We have a lot of the same interests. We like to play golf. We like to compete in other areas. Both of us are big Tar Heel fans, so that’s a good thing too, especially this year. But we enjoy each other’s company. Gosh, I probably spend as much time around him as I do with my wife and kids, so it’s nice that we have that relationship. But we’re very open and honest in the fact that when we do something to our race cars, or we try something, if he’s off testing – literally if he’s off testing I know that by 6 o’clock that evening I’m gonna get a phone call from Elliott and he’s gonna tell me what they’d done, what worked, what didn’t work. So that gives me that process to start thinking about our cars and then I can call Mike or go to the race shop the next day and we start that process of talking and seeing if that’s something we want to look at and do with our car. I’m the same way with him when I’m testing. He’s gonna be the first person I call after that to make sure that he understands what we did and try to work in that direction. So we have a good relationship. Even though we do have a friendship there and we have fun away from the track, it’s still a pretty serious business for us. We make sure that there’s nothing hidden. I can’t go back in the two years so far and tell you any time that I felt like there was something I had to go over in their books and see and to find out that he either told me something wrong or failed to tell me something because everything has always been right there and he’s told me anything that they’ve done. That’s the type of open relationship you have to have to honestly make this teammate thing really work well.”
WHAT DO YOU THINK OF FANS LOOKING THROUGH THE NEW GARAGE WINDOWS HERE AT DIS? “I think it’s a great idea that they get to look in. I’ll be honest with you, the fans are great and it’s a great opportunity that has been presented to them to be able to see first-hand what takes place in these garages. I’ll be honest with you, the one thing I’m not sure that I like is the opportunity for them to hand stuff in to be autographed because that again is our work place. I have a policy, plain and simple, if I’m in the garage area and it’s during practice time, I’m not autographing anything. I hope they understand that, so that’s the only problem that I foresee is someone may get a little bit angry. When I’m in there I’m there to work. I might not be driving the car at that time. I’m either thinking about or talking with my crew about things that we need to do, but the opportunity to be able to look in and see things that we’re doing – making changes and really be a part of that – I think that’s a great idea to be able to see first-hand what really goes on. So many times, even though they may see it through a camera lens or see it on tape, it’s not the same as being there to actually take advantage of that opportunity. So I think that part of it is gonna be a lot of fun for them.”
WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON LETTING ROOKIES DEVELOP AT THIS LEVEL? “Sometimes that opportunity is not there. I think some of these young guys that come in and have all of this fanfare that comes with them and all of these expectations, when it doesn’t turn out like that they get down on themselves a little bit and then maybe they’re not given as much of an opportunity to develop into the drivers that they certainly can become. Elliott is one of those that has persevered through some things. He’s worked his way up. He didn’t get that opportunity in a top-level car right as he came from the Busch Series. That’s not saying anything about the teams that he went with there, it’s just a matter of looking at making your way up. It’s different roads for everybody to come in here, but Elliott has a level head on him and understands that these things come in steps. I think that’s probably him, looking at the sport over the years, has helped him to understand that and he didn’t panic whenever he wasn’t given a Robert Yates ride right off. He realized that he needed some experience and he used that to his advantage. Others may not be so lucky with that. We may see some that come in and maybe don’t meet those expectations, whether they were their expectations or those of others. That makes life a little more difficult for them at times. You would like to think that they’re gonna be given that chance, but, again, it goes back to the earlier question. This is a performance-based business and it’s especially seeming like it’s more so for those younger guys because that’s the direction that everything seems to be headed in. But I think Elliott has now solidified himself as one of those, not only young drivers, but very good talents that has a chance to win championships.”
