Greg Biffle, driver of the No. 16 3M Ford Fusion, is looking to bounce back from a 33rd-place finish at Martinsville last weekend. He spoke with reporters about a variety of issues after practice.
GREG BIFFLE – No. 16 3M Ford Fusion – “I’ve had restrictor plate cars that are just as smooth as glass and then some that have a vibration.
It’s weird that our cars right now, whether it’s the gear, the driveshaft, the angle – whatever is going on – there’s extreme vibration, a real high, harmonic vibration which is kind of aggravating inside. We’re working on it. We got it better, but we’re gonna look at a few more things, but I think we got most of it out of it.”
CARL SAID HE FELT IT BEFORE, BUT IT’S HARD TO DUPLICATE AT THE SHOP.
“We’ve had some issue with our cars vibrating on about every race track. We’ve complained a little bit about it, but here it’s been extraordinarily different. It’s a different vibration and it’s a real high frequency, meaning it’s a real fine vibration. It almost hurts your body being in the seat, it’s transferring the vibration through your body so much. We don’t know what it is, but it’s obvious we don’t have something happy inside there. Something is not lined up perfect.”
HOW BIG OF A DEAL WOULD IT BE IF GANASSI MOVED TO FORD? “I think it would be great for Ford to have more teams in the sport. That being said, I don’t believe there would be a technology alliance between them and us. It would purely be them using the engine. I don’t think there would be any communication between the teams at that point, similar to a Hendrick and another Chevy team. They pretty much keep their information to themselves.”
HOW DO YOU DEAL WITH THAT VIBRATION? “You just have to deal with it inside the car. We know it has to do with speed also because when it’s vibrating it takes energy. It’s not as smooth as it can be. I doubt whether we’re gonna have it all the way fixed. We’re just gonna have to work harder with straight line testing and some other things to figure out what it is before we come to tracks like this.”
IS IT ANYMORE PHYSICALLY DEMANDING? “A little bit. Depending on the vibration it blurs your vision a little bit because your head is vibrating against the headrest, or you’ve got to hold your head off the headrest. You forget about it after they throw the green flag, but in practice you’re more sensitive because you’re more relaxed, but the car does have a lot of vibration.”
ARE THE SPEEDS ABOUT WHAT YOU EXPECTED? “Yeah, I think so. We’ve kind of been faster and slower. I think the speed is okay.”
