GREG BIFFLE – No. 16 3M Ford Fusion – WILL THE LEAD CAR HAVE A HUGE ADVANTAGE HERE? WHAT DO YOU THINK WE’LL SEE THIS WEEKEND? “I think people are trying to put more into it than there is to put into it. It’s purely laws of physics. The lead car is going to have an advantage, no matter what style of car we have. But I think so far we’ve learned with our new car, with it being a little boxier, has made it more difficult for the second car. And, of course, we would never know that until we get on the race track and find that out. We found that out that the second car pays a little higher price than before, and I don’t know that there’s a solution to that. I think it’s going to be suck it up and tough it out. That’s the way our racing is going to be. It’s going to be more difficult. The other thing I keep leaning towards is NASCAR, one of their goals to achieve was to make the cars more equal, make them the same, make them more similar to each other. And they’ve done that. Well, what happens when you do that is you make them the same. And when they’re the same, there isn’t a car that’s faster than the other. They’re really closer to the same speed. So, if they’re the same speed, how does a car pass another car, in layman’s terms? Certainly, you’re going to have passing, guys are going to have a better setup, but it makes it more, if they’re the same, the lead car will have more of an advantage because he’s in clean air. We can test here for a month, and I don’t think we’re going to come up with something that just by magic is going to make that second car just zoom past the first car. We may just find out some little tricks here and there that make that second and third car get by that first guy a little bit better, but everywhere we’ve been so far it’s been very difficult, and I don’t know that’s there’s going to be a solution. I think it’s more the platform we have has created more difficult racing, and we’re just going to have to deal with that.”
WHAT ABOUT THE NEW PAVEMENT IN TURN THREE? “I don’t know who decided to pave it or why they paved, but I’d be willing to be that it’s, not a mistake, but on accident has created a top groove that really, really, runs good and is real fun to drive, and it makes that upper groove fast. So, that’s going to put a lot of racing into this race track, where a guy can get his car working very well on the bottom, and then a guy running up top. So I think it’s going to create some exciting racing, and I’m certainly happy to see that new bit of pavement up there.”
DO YOU HAVE ANY OPINIONS ON WHETHER THERE NEEDS TO BE TWO 500-MILE RACES JUST SIX WEEKS APART HERE? IF YOU WERE THE GRAND SCHEDULE MAKER, WHAT WOULD YOU DO? “If I was the grand schedule maker I’d probably be in trouble. I hate to speculate. This is a fun race track. It’s not as much fun as it used to be because we don’t shift. That made it more racy, more exciting. I think NASCAR, if we keep coming here twice a year, should consider some other RPM rule and allow us to shift again. I think it’s going to put some more racing into this race track. But I respect that we need to keep the RPMs out of these engines and keep the cap on it, but I think we could put more excitement back in the racing by getting the car to come up off the corner faster and get a run at that lead guy. Only here, obviously, shifting is a factor. Should we come here twice? I think there’s some better race tracks that the fans can see more and would be better for television. This is a big, big place, and the cars get strung out here, we know that. If we want to see more excitement, more side-by-side racing, we should maybe look at a Kentucky or maybe Nashville or someplace like Iowa. We went and tested there twice. I think that place would be pretty exciting. It races like a Richmond. I think the fans would get their money’s worth.”
YOU’VE BEEN ON A GOOD STREAK LATELY. CAN YOU TALK ABOUT THE LAST FEW WEEKS? “We’ve had a great month. The month of May was really great for us. Super fast at Darlington, which was kind of a confidence builder, as far as the cars go, that we were really getting a handle on them. Unfortunately, we had some issues. Then we had a mediocre test at Charlotte and came back and ran outstanding. So, that was big confidence. Then we came here and tested decent, and we’ve always run pretty good at Dover – finished second to Carl in the fall and finished third to him this week. So, we’ve got a lot of momentum going. Being 10th in practice here this morning in race trim was pretty exciting for us. Now qualifying, I think we’re the bottom of the sheet. We just couldn’t get it going. I think we’ll go in here and kind of cook up a recipe that’ll get us a hopefully top-20 starting spot, a top-15, maybe. It’s going to be important to start up front here, and I’m
YOU MENTIONED MOMENTUM. ARE YOU A BELIEVER THAT MOMENTUM CAN CARRY OVER FROM ONE WEEK TO THE NEXT? “Sure. Yeah. Definitely momentum can. The teams guys are excited about it. But, the plain and simple fact is no matter how much momentum you have, we couldn’t get the car right in qualifying trim, we’re 35th or 40th, so no matter how much momentum you have, you have to get it right. And, we’re just off a little bit. When we’re racing, I’m not worried about it. We’re pretty dang good. But we’ve got to figure this thing out in qualifying here.”