AdvoCare 500 Advance (Atlanta Motor Speedway)
Friday, August 30, 2013Greg Biffle, driver of the No. 16 3M Ford Fusion, is currently ninth in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series standings with two races remaining before the field is set for the Chase. Biffle spoke about his situation in the AMS infield media center before Friday’s practice.
GREG BIFFLE – No. 16 3M Ford Fusion – WHAT IS THE MINDSET FOR YOU AND YOUR TEAM THIS WEEKEND? “We’re really looking forward to this race. The points are super-tight and this has been a hit-and-miss race track for us. We inherently are really good on mile-and-a-halves and this one has been a little difficult for us. We’ve been really good here and then not-so-good. We feel like we’ve come a long ways in the last six to eight weeks with the new Gen-6 car as a group, so we’re looking forward to this race. We’re looking forward to having a good run and then getting to Richmond and having another good run.”
HOW IS WORKING WITH A SPOTTER DIFFERENT IN THE CHASE? “I think there’s probably a little bit of heightened awareness during the Chase that things are a bit more critical because the championship is on the line now, but we typically at the same time don’t want to change anything too much that’s working well for us. Yes, I think you pay a little more attention and look at things a little closer and everybody tries to be the best they can be, but, at the same time, it’s not a tremendous amount different than what we’re doing now because sometimes that can have an adverse effect if you try to change too much stuff.”
WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT THIS NEW TIRE GOODYEAR HAS HERE? “You look at what they’ve done and it’s almost like, ‘How come we didn’t do that a long time ago?’ All technology is like that. Everything you see or an invention you’re like, ‘I wish I would have thought of that,’ or sometimes it’s just so simple that we look at maybe what they’ve done there. I’m really excited about the opportunity to run on that tire. I think it’s gonna be a great thing. We’re thinking it can provide more grip and tire wear and fall off, but yet still have the safety of not getting too hot and blowing out or getting the inside bead too hot. I think they’ve found that the inside bead is the failure bead maybe when you overheat a right-front or a tire versus the outside, so why not give the outside a little bit more traction or a little more grip and make it do some more work and then as it gives up, then you’re back to what the normal tire would be. So I think it’s a great opportunity for our sport and Goodyear and everybody to experiment with this. I know they’ve done a lot of testing and I know a lot of that technology exists in a street car. They have some soft compound strings of tread that are softer in a tire to get traction, yet have good long-term wear capabilities, so I’m really looking forward to it.”
DID YOU TEST ON THE TIRE? “I did not test the tire. I know a lot of guys tested it and got to come back and test it again.”
ROUSH AND PENSKE SUPPOSEDLY SHARE A LOT OF INFORMATION. DOES THAT PIPELINE NARROW SINCE YOU’RE BATTLING BOTH PENSKE GUYS FOR THE CHASE? HOW UNEASY OR AWKWARD IS IT TO WORK WITH THEM? “That’s a good question. It almost works the same, in my opinion, as two teammates coming down to racing for the championship . They’ve shared information all along, they’re looking at each other’s setups and doing all that. I don’t think anything really changes as far as a team goes when it comes down to if two guys are racing for the title. I sort of feel the same here. It’s a little bit of a different situation because we don’t really share a lot of technical data, meaning what shock do you have, what spring, what this, what that. The amount of sharing really probably doesn’t reflect that much of a competition advantage or disadvantage compared to a teammate. If it came down to Carl and I running first and second in the points, that’s a good question of how that information flows. But I see what you’re saying. We don’t share that much technical data as much as drive files and engines and things like that.”
WHERE DO YOU NEED TO MAKE SOME GAINS IN THE CHASE? “Obviously you’re pretty confident I’m gonna make it at this point, so I thank you for that. I have to say five weeks ago, especially after Indy, I would say we really don’t have a prayer of winning the championship if we make the Chase. That has changed over the last four or five weeks. We’ve gotten a lot better. We’re continuing to work hard with this new car and understanding it better and finding small things and continuing to improve. Of course, we’ve got a couple tests coming up that we’re hoping to learn some more about this race car and get more competitive, but I feel like we’ve gotten more competitive. Like when we went to Pocono, I feel like we got our suspension and got our cars running better than the first Pocono. Even though we didn’t finish second like we did the first Pocono, it felt like we had better speed and were more competitive. I feel like the second Michigan we just got done with, even though we finished ninth we had the fastest car it looked like, and the car was much better than it was in the spring. I got the fender knocked in and a hole in it on pit road from leading and that kind of relegated us back into the top 10 at that point. So I feel like we’ve made huge improvements on our car and that is definitely a momentum upswing heading into the Chase versus last year, where we were sort of hit-and-miss and had a pretty good average, and then the last four races before the Chase we were terrible. We really just weren’t that good and we were just kind of hanging on. We came out of Richmond with point lead before the reset, but I think we’re running better now and we’re on that upswing. If momentum has anything to do with it, we’re definitely going up instead of lateral or down.”
ARE THERE ANY SPECIFIC TRACKS YOU LIKE BEST? “Obviously the intermediate tracks, the mile-and-halves, are definintely our strong suit still. We looked forward to Chicago last year, the first race, and were really, really bad. I think we learned something from that, so I think we’ll be much better at Chicago this time around. There are a lot of mile-and-a-halves that we’re pretty good at.”
HOW DID THE STRUGGLES OF THE LAST FEW PRE-CHASE RACES LAST YEAR AFFECT YOUR CHASE? “We went in with the right attitude that we’re back into our saddle, we’re back into our good race tracks – Chicago, Dover, Loudon – those are three good tracks for us and we went to those tracks and ran miserable. We were thinking that it was track-specific why we didn’t perform quite the way we wanted to heading into the Chase, so we kind of reset and said, ‘OK, here we go. These are great tracks for us,’ and we still didn’t get going like we thought we would when the Chase started. That was pretty discouraging last year for us. I do believe this year it’s a much different situation for us. Like I said, we continue to find speed in our cars and are kind of building that momentum headed to the Chase.”
DO YOU THINK NOT TESTING WITH THIS NEW TIRE WILL PUT YOU AT A DISADVANTAGE IN THE RACE? “Yeah, I think so. We do have test data from Ricky and Carl that both tested here, and I know some other teams that got multiple tests that came and then came back and did the confirmation test. So that definitely is a huge advantage to those teams firing off today. When you get that kind of track time at a race track you race once a year and you have a new car that’s never been here before and a new tire, that’s definitely an advantage to the guys that got track time.”
WHAT MAKES ATLANTA SO DIFFERENT THAT YOU DON’T DO AS WELL HERE? “I think the track surface and the make-up of it. The lower grip inherently it seems like race tracks that have a lower adhesion or lower grip level we’re not as strong at even as an organization. That’s a little discouraging for us and we try and understand why, but it seems like the slicker race tracks and lower grip type of race tracks with less lateral load we’re not quite as strong at so that’s part of it. We’ve had really good runs here. We qualified on the outside front row and qualified on the pole the year before or two years ago, and have had some challenges for the win, so this has been a pretty good track, but, like I said, it’s sort of been hit-and-miss for us and this car will be a challenge this weekend. We found out with this car too that you’ve got to be right on the money or you’re either way off or right on. There’s no middle ground it seems like for us.”
