April 15, 2012: Commentary
By Reid Spencer
NASCAR Wire Service
This could be Greg Biffle's year -- and the driver of the No. 16 Roush Fenway Racing Ford certainly thinks it is.
Biffle
is in a unique position among NASCAR Sprint Cup drivers, the same
unique position he's occupied since 2002, when he won the Nationwide
Series championship.
Biffle
was then and currently is the only driver who can win NASCAR racing's
trifecta: championships in all three of the major touring series. The
first seven races of the 2012 season suggest that this is the year he's
likely to accomplish the feat.
Biffle's
rise to the highest level of NASCAR racing was meteoric. In 1998, the
Jack Roush protege was rookie of the year in the Camping World Truck
Series. In 2000, he won the Truck Series championship.
A
year later, Biffle was rookie of the year in the Nationwide Series. In
2001, he won the title. No other driver has won both Truck and
Nationwide championships, though reigning Trucks champ Austin Dillon,
currently third in the Nationwide standings, is a threat to do so this
year.
Biffle
came close to completing the triple in 2005, when he and teammate Carl
Edwards tied for second in the standings behind Tony Stewart. Biffle won
a career-best six races that year but fell 35 points short in the
championship battle.
In
2008, Biffle won the first two races in the Chase for the Sprint Cup,
but contact from Edwards in the fourth Chase race, at Talladega,
triggered a wreck that took out half of the championship contenders and
derailed Biffle's title run. He finished a distant third in the final
standings, 217 points behind Jimmie Johnson.
The
2012 season, however, has a different feel. "The Biff" has occupied the
top rung in the standings for five races now. He finished third in each
of the first three events of the season, wresting the lead from Phoenix
winner Denny Hamlin on March 11 at Las Vegas.
But
here's the rub. Nineteen races down the road, after the field for the
Chase for the Sprint Cup is set at Richmond, it won't matter how many
weeks Biffle has led the standings. The only thing that will matter is
how many races he's won, and that's why Saturday night's victory in the
Samsung Mobile 500 at Texas Motor Speedway is so important and so
telling.
Chase
qualifiers get three points for each win they achieve in the 26-race
regular season. That's all that separates one driver from the next at
the start of the 10-race playoff, after points are reset to a base of
2,000 each for Chase drivers.
As
Tony Stewart proved so dramatically last year, a driver can get hot in
the Chase and storm to the championship, no matter what other
competitors might have accomplished in the first 26 races.
The
good news for Biffle is that he doesn't have to worry about making the
Chase -- categorically. In eight seasons since the Chase was introduced
in 2004, the points leader after seven races has never failed to qualify
for the playoff. In three cases (Kurt Busch in 2004; Johnson in 2006
and 2010), the leader after seven races has gone on to win the
championship.
Those
are excellent odds, and the speed and determination Biffle showed
Saturday night in breaking a 49-race winless streak suggests that he and
his team have the wherewithal to do what a driver must do repeatedly in
the final 10 races -- win.
Though Biffle's rise through the ranks appeared effortless in the early years, the driver doesn't see it that way.
"When
I moved from the Truck Series to Nationwide, it was a huge step,"
Biffle said. "It was much, much harder. And when I moved from Nationwide
to the Cup series, I had no idea that the competition was going to be
what it was.
"I
knew it was going to be hard, but, man, it's tough, and there are a lot
of great drivers in this sport -- and a lot of good equipment. I knew
it was going to be hard, but this year is my year, so I'm going to keep
after it all the way to Homestead."
Believe it.
Biffle does.
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