NASCAR Sprint Cup Series: Chevy Rock & Roll 400

Topics:  Chevy Rock & Roll 400

Greg Biffle
September 12, 2009

RICHMOND, VIRGINIA

KERRY THARP: We are joined now by Greg Biffle, he drives the number 16 3M Ford for Roush Fenway Racing. Congratulations for a making the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup. Your thoughts about that?
GREG BIFFLE: Well, I'm certainly excited. I'm with Brian, it's been a stressful eight or ten weeks leading up to this. I know I'm going to sleep good tonight, and you know, refocus for the Chase, go to Loudon, hopefully we started the Chase off last year as a miracle Chase, won the first two events. So hopefully we can mirror that or get a couple top fives or something.
But we are just happy that we ended up 11th in points, you know, before the seeding process. That makes us feel like we ran good enough tonight to get in. We knew we were going to run in the Top-10, Top 15, and we did all night.
But you know, just really excited for the guys at 3M and Roush and everybody who has worked so hard to get this team where it's at.

Q. What do you guys have to do to pick things up? Certainly it seems like the Roush cars have not been as strong lately and a few of the guys have surged forward. Obviously the points reset and it gives everybody a second chance but what do you have to do to have a shot at this?
GREG BIFFLE: Just keep figuring out how to make our cars faster and that's what we have been doing the last ten weeks, all season. We only have two wins as an organization this career and they both came from Matt, first and second race of the year.
So we know that we are off a little bit, but you know, we are not going to give up. We are just going to keep working as hard as we can, and we know we need to be a little bit better. We thought this front suspension package we tried here was going to be the deal and it wasn't. You know, I don't know if we ran any better or worse than we would have but we are going to continue to work on it. That's all I can say.

Q. Greg, just kind of talking a little bit about how now you can finally breathe and relax, but for how long?
GREG BIFFLE: About six days till the Loudon race comes around, and we have to get it done there and go to Dover, Kansas, all the places that we love.
One plus, California now is in the Chase lineup which is good. Now if we could just get Las Vegas maybe instead of Martinsville and then trade maybe Bristol for Talladega, it would be perfect for me.

Q. I apologize for the somewhat harshness, but to this point, when you look at the results, is it fair to say that at least right now, things are getting worse instead of better with the team, with Roush Fenway?
GREG BIFFLE: I don't know if I would say that. We are not getting better. I wouldn't say we are getting worse.
We ran -- we qualified 24th and we were, I think 8th on that last restart, and ended up 13th. So that wasn't worse than what we ran here in the spring, but it's certainly not as good as we want to run. So we need to continue to work on it, try and get better. But that's all we can do right now.

Q. How much credit do you give your pit crew? They seem to have been spot on and this year and what do you say about Andy Ward?
GREG BIFFLE: Those guys are the reason we are sitting here tonight. I gained every single time I came down pit road, whether it was one, two, three, or one stop I gained four spots. We were in a good spot on pit road, too. I could get in and out of my pit box really fast and that helped. They just did a fantastic job. I can't say enough about them, I'm so excited about it. I hope we proved some people wrong, once this Chase gets going, that we are going to be ones to be looked at. We will just have to wait and see.

Q. Can you specifically talk about Andy Ward, your pit crew coordinator?
GREG BIFFLE: Yeah, I don't know what I can say about Andy. He's a great guy and does a great job with the pit crew guys, the training, all of the things, the coaching that he does. You know, it takes a lot of special people. People is what wins championships, and not a good engine, not a good car; it's the people that will win a title. And you've got to have all the right people to get your equipment right.

Q. Could you clarify the comment you made about your front suspension package; was that something your team tried, or did anyone else do it, specifically, Matt's team.
GREG BIFFLE: I think every team here had it. We have been testing down in Florida a little bit, and I mean, it wasn't like some revolutionary thing. It was just a little bit different package than we have been running.
You know, I definitely don't think it was worse. But it wasn't like a miracle fix, you know, but I think every team had it, a version of it.

Q. If you could just talk about the way the points are reset, you are only 40, 50 points out of the lead now; if you could talk about what a huge thing that is.
GREG BIFFLE: Yeah, I'm excited about it, because if I win the first two races this year, I'll be leading the points and last year I wasn't.
It's pretty tight. 40 points, that's reachable in a couple of races. We are just going to have to -- like I said, we are just going to have to run better. We are capable of that and we have good racetracks coming up. That's what I'm excited about.
A lot of it has to do with the racetracks, as well. We finished fourth at Bristol. Led some of it, so we are definitely a fast enough team, fast enough cars. The racetrack lineup is pretty good for us in the Chase but a couple of spots.
KERRY THARP: Congratulations and we'll see you in New Hampshire.