NASCAR Gander Outdoors Truck Series Overview
Event: SpeedyCash.com 400 (Race 9 of 23), 167 Laps – 40/40/87; 250.5 Miles
Location: Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth (1.5-mile quad-oval)
Date/Broadcast: June 7, 2019 at 9 p.m. ET on FS1, MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR 90
What You Need to Know
- Veteran racer Greg Biffle will return to the track at Texas Motor Speedway after a three-year hiatus for his first NASCAR start since 2016 and his first Gander Outdoors Truck Series start since 2004. Biffle last competed in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series season finale at Homestead in 2016. However, this spring he did travel with the No. 51 team to Texas Motor Speedway during the March event weekend and was able to make approximately a dozen laps in the opening practice session in preparation for his return to the Gander Truck Series.
- The 49-year-old driver has 81 NASCAR Gander Outdoors Truck Series races under his belt, with 16 wins, 42 top-five and 54 top-10 finishes. His average starting position is 7.4 and his average finish is 9.1. Biffle also has 20 career NASCAR Xfinity Series wins and 19 career MENCS wins.
- Biffle has five starts in the Gander Trucks at Texas, with one win in the spring of 2000. He started from the pole and led 120 of 167 laps en route to victory and also won the April Cup Series race at TMS in both 2005 and 2012. In the Truck Series, he also has three top-five and three top-10 finishes with an average start of 9.0 and an average finish of 10.6.
- Veteran crew chief Rudy Fugle leads the 51 team this season. Fugle has guided his team to four Owner’s Championships (2013, 2015, 2016 and 2017) as a crew chief at KBM, including combined Owner’s/Driver’s Championships with Erik Jones in 2015 and Christopher Bell in 2017. The New York native’s drivers have combined for 27 wins, 22 poles, 62 top-five and 97 top-10 finishes across his 121 races calling the shots for the organization. Fugle has four wins at Texas, with Busch earlier this season, Christopher Bell in June 2017, William Byron in June 2016, and Erik Jones in Nov. 2015, as well as five top-five and nine top-10 finishes in 12 races.
- After eight races, the No. 51 team leads the owner’s points standings by 35 markers over second place. The team has earned five wins with owner-driver Kyle Busch behind the wheel, and has two poles, six top-five and six top-10 finishes.
Greg Biffle, Driver Q&A
Why come back for one race?
“Well, I always said it was the right opportunity to come back into NASCAR. I’ve been talking to Kyle since I got out of the Cup car about maybe running some races, and he had a need for this particular Truck [Series] race and the 51 didn’t have a driver and we talked over a sand dune trip and decided that I’d come run this one race for him.”
How will the practice laps you ran at Texas earlier this year help you?
“So that was my biggest question when we decided to do it. I asked if there was any chance I could get a few laps in at the spring [March] Texas race, just to see what these things feel like, get an idea of the new configuration of the race track. I was able to make about 12 laps, just get a rough idea of what the truck drove like, what it felt like. That will help me going out for practice one, just to have an idea of what the track and the truck will feel like.”
How different is it from a long time ago when you were in the Truck Series?
“The difference between when I drove the truck and when I drove in [March], quite a bit of difference, obviously. But what it reminded me of, it reminded me more of what I’ve been doing over the last 10 years in the Cup car. The truck felt really similar to that, obviously I was by myself, I wasn’t around other trucks, but it kind of gave me that impression of bump-stops and similar to what the Cup car is. Granted, the aero is a lot different and around traffic it will be a tremendous amount different, but I felt pretty good.”
What are your expectations going into the race?
“The bar has been set pretty high, obviously, by Kyle [Busch, owner-driver] winning five times in this 51 truck, but I look at the results when Kyle is not in it and some of the other trucks, my expectations are certainly high and I certainly want to win, but coming back for the first time and driving these things and figuring the tire and the aero out and all the competitors out. I want a solid top-five performance. I won’t be happy if I don’t win, but again I don’t want to set my expectations too awful high.”
Greg Biffle Career Highlights
- Biffle, who has not competed in a NASCAR event since the Cup Series finale in 2016, has 16 wins, 12 poles, 42 top-five and 54 top-10 finishes, resulting in an average finish of 9.1 across 81 career NGOTS starts.
- He captured Truck Series Rookie of the Year honors in 1998, finished second in the championship standings in 1999 and then won the series championship in 2000.
- In addition to his 16 Truck Series wins, the Washington-state native earned the NASCAR Xfinity Series crown in 2002 and has 20 wins in that series as well as 19 Monster Energy Cup Series victories.
Greg Biffle’s No. 51 Tundra:
KBM-055: Crew chief Rudy Fugle and the No. 51 Cessna team will unload chassis KBM-055 at Texas Motor Speedway for the SpeedyCash.com 400 this Friday. This chassis was last taken out by Brandon Jones in Kansas earlier this year, where he piloted it to a fifth-place finish. Owner-driver Kyle Busch raced the chassis twice in 2019, at Texas in the March outing, and at Atlanta, winning both times.
KBM Notes of Interest
- KBM drivers have 44 starts at Texas Motor Speedway and have earned six wins, 13 top-five and 28 top-10 finishes, with an average starting position of 8.9 and an average finish of 10.9.
- Owner-driver Kyle Busch has captured three of the team’s six victories at Texas Motor Speedway, including the most recent one earlier this season (Nov. 2010, Nov. 2014, March 2019), and Erik Jones (Nov. 2015), William Byron (June 2016), and Christopher Bell (June 2017) each earned one.
- KBM holds the Gander Truck Series records for most career wins (73) and most wins in a single season (14 in 2014). In addition to collecting a series-record six Owner’s Championships, the organization has produced two championship-winning drivers; Erik Jones (2015) and Christopher Bell (2017).
