NASCAR Cup

All-Star: Biffle - Friday media visit

Greg Biffle, driver of the No. 16 3M Ford Fusion, held his weekly Q&A session after Friday's practice session at Lowe's Motor Speedway. WHAT ARE YOUR CHANCES TOMORROW? "I was a little nervous coming here and a little nervous at ...

Edited: May 18, 2008, 4:18 PM

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Greg Biffle, driver of the No. 16 3M Ford Fusion, held his weekly Q&A session after Friday's practice session at Lowe's Motor Speedway.

WHAT ARE YOUR CHANCES TOMORROW? "I was a little nervous coming here and a little nervous at Darlington because our test wasn't as good as it needed to be. Right now, I'm really, really excited because I can't explain why, but we're really, really fast. We're probably one of the fastest cars and that's really exciting for me. I can't wait for qualifying tonight. That's so much fun. I've had so much fun in this practice because there's not a lot of pressure. You can practice getting onto pit road. You can speed with no penalty and slow down to get your speed right on the mark. There's no pit road speed exiting pit road, so this practice session has been a lot of fun, plus our car has been pretty fast."

HOW SURPRISED WERE YOU WITH THE SPIN PEOPLE TOOK TOWARD YOUR COMMENTS AT DARLINGTON AFTER THE RACE? "I was really surprised because I didn't mention anything about what I was doing and I don't understand, and I want you guys to go interview 42 other guys and tell me one guy that wouldn't have got out of that car and been mad -- just been kicking rocks and going, 'Dang it, I'm leading the race with a five-second lead and now I'm out.' I had a great car. That's the positive thing about it -- a fast race car -- and that's what I always complain about is wanting to have a fast race car and I did have a fast race car. There's no doubt in my mind and that's exciting for me. We had a lot of things happen, but we're just gonna have to get better. We're gonna have to get better at it in order to beat the 18, the 48, the 99 and all the other guys in the garage. We're just gonna have to get better. And the engine, we weren't sure what broke right at first, but then we found out it was the timing belt after they found out it was broke. That just reiterates the fact that it was a mechanical issue. It stripped the teeth off the timing belt. It wasn't of anyone's doing. Everybody did their job correctly. The engine shop takes such care of our engines and they're so meticulous about how they're assembled and they make great power, obviously. Look at the power the car had, so I'm happy with how the engine shop handled that situation. To go a step further, probably more information than you need, is they felt like they had a timing belt issue after the Richmond race. They saw some wear they didn't like. They felt like my car on Tuesday prior to the Darlington race had a timing belt in it that was suspicious of that batch of belts, so they actually changed my engine on Tuesday of the Darlington race because of the timing belt -- trying to prevent a failure or an issue -- and then the timing belt broke. So they did everything possible to make that engine live, so that was unfortunate. But we've got to get better on our pit stops. The guys are working hard at it and we'll get there."

WHEN YOUR CAR IS SO GOOD IN PRACTICE WHY KEEP PRACTICING? "One luxury you have is when your car is so good -- I made the first run and said, 'I don't want to change a thing. I like it.' They said, 'OK.' Well, we came up with this alternate setup on the seven-post and on the computer and we want to try it. Your car is so good, you don't need the rest of practice so we're able to try a completely different setup on the car. We can go out and feel it out because we can always put it right back to the setup that we had and go right into qualifying. So when your car is that good off the truck, it gives you that luxury of we had a 30-minute test session that we didn't care what we did, just throwing whatever at it, and we found some stuff that made the car even faster. So we're gonna try to run it in the All-Star race and see what we think of it. It may not work. We may win the All-Star race, but then we'll go back to setup B, which was dang fast too, for the 600 or, if we can iron this out and get this running good, we think there's a little bit more speed with this and a little easier to drive as far as grip, so it was good for us that our car was fast and then we used the rest of that practice session to test some things."

YOU HAVE ONE BAD RACE AND PEOPLE HAVE YOU GONE FROM ROUSH AND IN SOME OTHER RIDE. "I can't comment on what their speculation is. Nothing has changed. I can't do anything about how emotional those people got about what I said and how they lay awake at night thinking about where I'm gonna go drive. I don't understand. I don't quit. I'm not gonna quit on my guys. I'm not gonna give up."

BASED ON PRACTICE HERE DO YOU SEE THE RACING HERE BEING ANY DIFFERENT THAN TEXAS? "I don't see it a lot different than Texas. These race tracks are not similar, but are a little bit. I think these cars make it harder to catch one another and make any moves, so it'll probably be tougher than normal, but this car, I think, has been harder to pass overall. I think everybody has seen that. It hasn't made it harder to pass, it's equaled out the field more, I think, is what you've seen. There isn't one car that's a lot faster than the other car."

-credit: ford racing

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