68fastback
10-09-2010, 01:22 AM
Don't ya just love it when a plan comes together!
Some nice insights... excerpted from Greg Biffle interview section of today's Ford Media Release on heading into California...
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Greg Biffle, driver of the No. 16 3M Ford Fusion, has a pair of wins this season, including last week at Kansas Speedway. The win allowed Biffle to move within 85 points of leader Jimmie Johnson in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series point standings. He spoke with reporters after Friday’s practice session.
GREG BIFFLE – No. 16 3M Ford Fusion – HOW HAVE THINGS GONE SO FAR? “I’m certainly really excited about coming off a good week last week and the car is fast right off the truck again – good in race practice and we switched to qualifying practice and I think we ended up in the top five, so it looks the same as last weekend so far. It looks like we’re gonna have a decent qualifying run, although we’ve got to back it up on the race track now. We’ll see what happens here in a little bit, but I feel really good about this race track. I like it here. We run well on this race track and I just can’t wait for Sunday and can’t wait for qualifying, hopefully get a good lap and look forward to the race.”
WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON HAVING ONLY ONE CALIFORNIA RACE NEXT YEAR? “Obviously I’m not real excited about that. This is probably one of our best race tracks that we race at, so getting cut down to one time – me personally – it’s gonna hurt. I’ve got a lot of family here and get back to the west coast a little bit. I’ve got friends and family who come from Washington and Oregon, where I grew up. I see a lot of people here I used to race with and fans, so it gives all the west coasters a chance to come and visit this race track. So I think it has a pretty good draw from a lot of different states. As far as that goes, one is the personal side of it. I really enjoy coming to Southern California and get to see everybody, but two, I run really good here so that’s kind of a double thing for me. I guess the bright side of it is, if there’s a positive, is at least we get to come here once a year. Unfortunately, we’re not gonna get to come twice.”
DO YOU THINK THE FR9 IS COMING ON AT THE RIGHT TIME AND WHY OR WHY NOT? “I was hoping that this was gonna happen. It was kind of ironic that the FR9 engine came in right as Ford had struggled for so long. We really struggled with our cars. Our engines have always been great and made great power and been reliable, so it was like, ‘When are we ever gonna get our cars turned around and get our cars running better and be more competitive?’ And right as we did that, we were integrating the FR9 engine into the program, so it sort of makes it look like the FR9 engine is really our saving grace in the whole thing, and that’s part of the piece of the puzzle, but it’s not as big as what some people from the outside would look at that don’t know a lot about the sport. They say, ‘Oh, they’ve got their new engine. Now they’re winning races and really competing well.’ So really, where the turnaround was, if you look back at our stats, was Chicago for all Roush Fenway cars. The RPM cars had outrun us for the better part of the season, so we kind of switched to more of their suspension package in Chicago and I think Carl has three second-place finishes then, I’ve got two wins and was running second when the engine expired at Chicago that very race, so, really, that was kind of our turnaround race. We really turned our program around and the engine came on board, so with the two combination, it certainly made us a ton better. Some of the things about the engine, it makes a little bit better mid-range power, which the passing takes place from the center of the corner to the corner exit. When you put the gas down, the guy whose car handles the best and puts the gas down the earliest is normally the guy that will make the pass, but also that’s where you need the engine to have its most power. So this engine does that a little bit better and then the cooling package, we’ve really caught up to all the other manufacturers on our cooling package. It’s a little bit more efficient, so we’re able to match the tape on the front of the car as the other guys, so those two things – and it’s got the lower center of gravity. It is a little heavier than the old engine just because we had to make our engine a little bit longer to match the other manufacturers, so it has plusses and minuses to it as far as what it does.”
ARE YOU FEELING MORE COMFORTABLE WITH IT NOW AND CAN PUSH THE LIMITS MORE? “Yeah, I definitely do, especially after last week because we definitely tested it last week. The engine was on the chip for three-quarters of that race from just past the flag stand all the way to the corner. The engine shop said, ‘Make sure you don’t run this engine on the chip. We don’t want it running on the rev chip. Run it right before it.’ When you start making it miss on cylinders it gets angry inside with all the parts and pieces. Of course, we listened to them and then ran it on the chip for three-quarters of the day and the thing lived the whole time. I got preliminary reports back that everything looked good in the engine – the valvetrain looked good, everything looked good – so maybe in the future we can get another 100 RPM and get the blessing from the engine guys to run the engine another 100 RPM. It’s not that you can’t run it another 100 RPM if you feel like it, it’s just particular tracks. Like here, we’re turning 9400 RPM or so – 9350 or so, and then in the race we’ll probably turn only 9100. So that’s an extreme from last week when it was turning 9600. This week during the race it’s probably turning 9100 or 9200, so it just depends on the race track and the temperature of the day as far as how many RPM the engine runs.”
Some nice insights... excerpted from Greg Biffle interview section of today's Ford Media Release on heading into California...
---
Greg Biffle, driver of the No. 16 3M Ford Fusion, has a pair of wins this season, including last week at Kansas Speedway. The win allowed Biffle to move within 85 points of leader Jimmie Johnson in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series point standings. He spoke with reporters after Friday’s practice session.
GREG BIFFLE – No. 16 3M Ford Fusion – HOW HAVE THINGS GONE SO FAR? “I’m certainly really excited about coming off a good week last week and the car is fast right off the truck again – good in race practice and we switched to qualifying practice and I think we ended up in the top five, so it looks the same as last weekend so far. It looks like we’re gonna have a decent qualifying run, although we’ve got to back it up on the race track now. We’ll see what happens here in a little bit, but I feel really good about this race track. I like it here. We run well on this race track and I just can’t wait for Sunday and can’t wait for qualifying, hopefully get a good lap and look forward to the race.”
WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON HAVING ONLY ONE CALIFORNIA RACE NEXT YEAR? “Obviously I’m not real excited about that. This is probably one of our best race tracks that we race at, so getting cut down to one time – me personally – it’s gonna hurt. I’ve got a lot of family here and get back to the west coast a little bit. I’ve got friends and family who come from Washington and Oregon, where I grew up. I see a lot of people here I used to race with and fans, so it gives all the west coasters a chance to come and visit this race track. So I think it has a pretty good draw from a lot of different states. As far as that goes, one is the personal side of it. I really enjoy coming to Southern California and get to see everybody, but two, I run really good here so that’s kind of a double thing for me. I guess the bright side of it is, if there’s a positive, is at least we get to come here once a year. Unfortunately, we’re not gonna get to come twice.”
DO YOU THINK THE FR9 IS COMING ON AT THE RIGHT TIME AND WHY OR WHY NOT? “I was hoping that this was gonna happen. It was kind of ironic that the FR9 engine came in right as Ford had struggled for so long. We really struggled with our cars. Our engines have always been great and made great power and been reliable, so it was like, ‘When are we ever gonna get our cars turned around and get our cars running better and be more competitive?’ And right as we did that, we were integrating the FR9 engine into the program, so it sort of makes it look like the FR9 engine is really our saving grace in the whole thing, and that’s part of the piece of the puzzle, but it’s not as big as what some people from the outside would look at that don’t know a lot about the sport. They say, ‘Oh, they’ve got their new engine. Now they’re winning races and really competing well.’ So really, where the turnaround was, if you look back at our stats, was Chicago for all Roush Fenway cars. The RPM cars had outrun us for the better part of the season, so we kind of switched to more of their suspension package in Chicago and I think Carl has three second-place finishes then, I’ve got two wins and was running second when the engine expired at Chicago that very race, so, really, that was kind of our turnaround race. We really turned our program around and the engine came on board, so with the two combination, it certainly made us a ton better. Some of the things about the engine, it makes a little bit better mid-range power, which the passing takes place from the center of the corner to the corner exit. When you put the gas down, the guy whose car handles the best and puts the gas down the earliest is normally the guy that will make the pass, but also that’s where you need the engine to have its most power. So this engine does that a little bit better and then the cooling package, we’ve really caught up to all the other manufacturers on our cooling package. It’s a little bit more efficient, so we’re able to match the tape on the front of the car as the other guys, so those two things – and it’s got the lower center of gravity. It is a little heavier than the old engine just because we had to make our engine a little bit longer to match the other manufacturers, so it has plusses and minuses to it as far as what it does.”
ARE YOU FEELING MORE COMFORTABLE WITH IT NOW AND CAN PUSH THE LIMITS MORE? “Yeah, I definitely do, especially after last week because we definitely tested it last week. The engine was on the chip for three-quarters of that race from just past the flag stand all the way to the corner. The engine shop said, ‘Make sure you don’t run this engine on the chip. We don’t want it running on the rev chip. Run it right before it.’ When you start making it miss on cylinders it gets angry inside with all the parts and pieces. Of course, we listened to them and then ran it on the chip for three-quarters of the day and the thing lived the whole time. I got preliminary reports back that everything looked good in the engine – the valvetrain looked good, everything looked good – so maybe in the future we can get another 100 RPM and get the blessing from the engine guys to run the engine another 100 RPM. It’s not that you can’t run it another 100 RPM if you feel like it, it’s just particular tracks. Like here, we’re turning 9400 RPM or so – 9350 or so, and then in the race we’ll probably turn only 9100. So that’s an extreme from last week when it was turning 9600. This week during the race it’s probably turning 9100 or 9200, so it just depends on the race track and the temperature of the day as far as how many RPM the engine runs.”