Re-Energized Biffle on Top Early in NASCAR Season at LinesMaker

KANSAS (NASCAR/) – Greg Bif­fle roared through the early stages of his NASCAR career.

Bif­fle gave Jack Roush his first NASCAR sea­son title in 2000 by win­ning the Trucks Series, two years after he was the rookie of the year. Then came the nat­ural pro­gres­sion to the Nation­wide Series, where Bif­fle won another rookie of the year award and fol­lowed imme­di­ately with the 2002 sea­son cham­pi­onship before mov­ing up again.

A decade later, Bif­fle is still try­ing to become the first dri­ver to com­plete the NASCAR title trio.

This could finally be the year for the re-energized Bif­fle, who is com­ing off a vic­tory at Texas that rein­forced his stand­ing as the early-season Sprint Cup points leader.

“When I moved from the Trucks Series to Nation­wide, it was a huge step. It was much, much harder. And when I moved from the Nation­wide to the Cup Series, I had no idea that the com­pe­ti­tion was going to be what it was,” Bif­fle said. “I knew it was going to be hard. But this year is my year.”

Biffle’s fifth top-five fin­ish in seven races this sea­son came in the fastest Cup race ever in Texas and snapped his 49-race win­less drought. With only two early cau­tions, and 234 con­sec­u­tive green-flag laps to end the race, he got a big boost in the pits from crew chief Matt Puc­cia and the rest of his team at the 1 1/2-mile, high-banked track.

“That gives me huge con­fi­dence,” Bif­fle said. “I know that from about the third race, that these guys, the guys that Matt had put together, we kind of held the hand­cuffs on them a lit­tle bit last year until we got to the end of the sea­son, and he revamped the entire team over the win­ter. I really, really like my guys.”

Puc­cia, who like Bif­fle worked his way up through the Roush orga­ni­za­tion, replaced Greg Erwin mid­way through last sea­son. The No. 16 Roush Fen­way Ford had its only three poles of the sea­son after that, but wasn’t enough to keep Bif­fle from fin­ish­ing 16th in points, his worst since 2004 in his sec­ond full Cup season.

“That guy, I promise you, if any­body can take me to win­ning a cham­pi­onship, it’s Matt Puc­cia,” Bif­fle said. “He never gives up, never leaves a rock unturned.”

They started this sea­son with third-place fin­ishes in each of the first three races, tak­ing over the points lead after the third race in Las Vegas. A pair of 13th-place fin­ishes are the only ones out­side the top six.

“It was really an unusual thing when we went after the team the way we did last year and said, you know, we just got great peo­ple but they’re not just work­ing together as well as they need to and we need to orga­nize our­selves dif­fer­ently,” Jack Roush said after the Texas vic­tory. “That’s a rar­ity that we do that. But that cer­tainly was the key to get­ting the momen­tum that we’ve got going right now.”

Bif­fle is cer­tainly off to a much bet­ter start than last sea­son, when the same open­ing three-race stretch set the tone for a frus­trat­ing season.

There was a 35th-place fin­ish at Day­tona, before fin­ish­ing 20th at Phoenix and 28th at Las Vegas.

This week’s Cup race is in Kansas, where Bif­fle had last won before Sat­ur­day night in the Lone Star State. He has gone to Vic­tory Lane twice in Kansas with eight top-10 fin­ishes in the 11 pre­vi­ous races at the 1 1/2-mile track.

Even though Bif­fle hasn’t won a Cup sea­son title, the 42-year-old dri­ver has had suc­cess on NASCAR’s high­est level. The win in Texas was his 17th in the Cup Series.

In 2005, Bif­fle won six times, and had 15 top-five fin­ishes. He tied for sec­ond in sea­son points with team­mate Carl Edwards, only 35 behind Tony Stewart.

Three years later, Bif­fle rebounded from miss­ing the Chase two years in a row, and was third behind Jim­mie John­son and Edwards, who won nine races in 2008. Bif­fle became the first dri­ver to win two of the 10 Chase races in the same sea­son though those were his only victories.

For now, Bif­fle is enjoy­ing being on top while real­iz­ing there are 19 more races before the final 10-race Chase starts in mid-September. He hopes to be in the same spot at the end of the sea­son, no mat­ter what hap­pens before then.

“I know that we’re prob­a­bly not going to lead the points the whole way. So I’m happy and proud of our team fight­ing to stay in the points lead run­ning as good as we can every week,” Bif­fle said. “If and when that hap­pens, cer­tainly I’m not going to let that take the wind out of our sails. … We’re going to work as hard as we can to keep the points lead, keep in the top five, keep in the top three.

“If we con­tinue to lead the points, that’s a bonus,” he said. “If we’re not lead­ing the points, we still are going to have that pos­i­tive attitude.”