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[/media-credit]Greg Biffle, who started on the pole at Texas Motor Speedway in November and posted the second fasted first practice session of the day Thursday, met with media members to discuss his past success at TMS, including a win in 2005, leading the current point standings and more.
GREG BIFFLE, No. 16 Filtrete Ford – TALK ABOUT HOW PRACTICE WENT YESTERDAY AND WHAT YOU LOOK FORWARD TO TOMORROW. “Practice went fairly well yesterday and we were happy with the way our Filtrete Ford Fusion drove and it gave us an opportunity to try some different stuff with shock and spring combinations and bars because the car was so fast right off the truck. That made it nice and this is a good track for us. I like this race track so I am curious to see how today is going to go. We are going to try a few different things and we think we have a pretty good handle on the car. Hopefully qualifying goes well for us later on.”
AS WELL AS YOU HAVE RUN EARLY IN THE SEASON, HOW IMPORTANT IS IT TO KNOW OUT A WIN WHILE YOU HAVE THIS MOMENTUM. “Any time is a good time to win a race. These are some good opportunities for us in Texas and Kansas which are two great tracks for us. We ran, in our standards, fairly well at Martinsville being top-10 most of the day. Unfortunately there at the end with the 10 car and the way the cautions fell and the lucky dog we ended up 13th. This is a race track and we have a great lineup all the way through Darlington and Dover, all these race tracks, that we think we can win at. It is important for us to win. We are trying and we were off a little bit at Vegas. Hopefully we will be on the money here.”
AS WELL AS YOU HAVE RUN, ARE YOU KIND OF SURPRISED IT HAS BEEN SO LONG BETWEEN TRIPS TO VICTORY LANE FOR YOU? “Considering how we ran last year, no. Considering we are only six in this year and I am not too nervous about it yet. We get halfway through the season and we haven’t won, then I will be.”
CAN YOU TALK ABOUT THE RUBBER BEING LAID DOWN ON THE TRACK HERE AND HOW MUCH TIME YOU SPEND THINKING ABOUT WHAT IT MEANS BEING AT THE TOP OF THE PACK IN POINTS OR NOT? “It means a lot. I had a vacation, a little getaway planned and I was hoping I could go on that and be the point leader after Martinsville and it worked out in my favor. You know, we know as a team and I know that we probably won’t be at the top of the leaderboard the entire season. We are certainly enjoying it now and focusing on winning. It is important for us to win. That is what we care about really the most. Leading the points is good but we really care about winning. With winning, we will continue to lead the points so it is a double edged sword there. As for the rubber, I was listening to Brad (Keselowski) talk about that and I am not sure what he is talking about. Normally we get here and the track is green, gets rubber put down, the track gets slick and the cooler temperature of the track increases grip so at night the track will have a little more grip and speed. Everywhere we go, especially this place which is classic for it, the car is super fast out of the gate, the track get’s rubbered in and the groove moves up. Nobody was running up the track yesterday. I imagine today that people will be up both ends. The track just has to get rubbered in.”
HAVE YOU EVER CONSIDERED WHAT IT WOULD MEAN FOR YOU TO WIN A TITLE? “I sit and think about it every once in awhile. I think about what it would mean to win one for me personally and then what we have to do to win one. It gives me great confidence when we go to Martinsville, a place that is kind of a little bit of a nemesis for us as a company and me as a driver and we ran respectable there. That is one race out of the 10 Chase races, you have to be good at all 10 to win the title, and we can be pretty competitive at like eight of nine of them and that has always been a little bit of an Achilles heel for me. The last few trips to Martinsville have been pretty good for us. That is the key in me winning a championship. I need to run good there and get through Talladega, which everybody wants to do that. I have thought about it and it would be something special for me to be able to do that and I think that we have the team that can do it, whether this year is the year we will just have to wait and see.”
WITH KANSAS COMING UP, THIS IS GOING TO BE THE LAST RACE WITH THE OLD STYLE THERE. WHAT DO YOU EXPECT AND ARE YOU IN FAVOR OR NOT OF THAT? “I like Kansas the way it is. If they change the left side tire, put the California tire or the Indy left side tire that we tested at California it would be a much better race. I understand they want to repave it so that is what is going to happen. I am not a huge fan of repaves because it takes a little bit for the track to get its character back. We know they have to come with a fairly hard tire. It will be slick and it is hard to drive and hard to get side-by-side in the beginning. It takes a bit for that track to get competitive again it seems like. That is not always the case, but most of the time that is the case. At Phoenix, that wasn’t really the case. Phoenix came back and raced pretty good right away, although we weren’t really worried about super high speeds. We may not be so much at Kansas because the corner is a little flatter. It is what it is. The old tracks are fun to race on because there is a whole lot of strategy involved and when they repave them it takes a bit for that to come back.”
TALK ABOUT GOING FROM PRACTICE DURING THE DAY TO RACING AT NIGHT HERE AND THE WIND. “Wind is definitely a factor. Yesterday you could tell in the car and it played havoc getting into turn three, it was difficult. You had to judge whether the change you made on the car was the win or was actually the car driving different. That made some difficulty. It is tough going from day to night here. This practice is hard to work on your car and is more of screwing you up from two to three-thirty than getting you car driving right. You get your car driving right from 2:00 to 3:30 and I promise you it isn’t going to drive right at 7:00 o’clock at night. You have to take that into consideration on what you are looking for in the drive of your car because it is hard to practice in the day and race at night. Charlotte is way worse with that new surface and the way it is. Here it is a little closer but still different.”
