1,000 Greatest Drivers: Greg Biffle

I'm certainly not paywalling this one...

I was still working on my top 200 list and updating all my models at the time Biffle died, but I knew this had to be the first column I completed when I returned to the 1,000 greatest driver posts. Not only was it tragic that Biffle and his entire family died in a plane crash only a year after he was saving lives in Hurricane Helene, but his house was even burglarized after his death. It was also sad that Biffle really didn’t seem to have as much of a legacy as he deserved. Despite 19 wins during a period that pretty much directly lined up with NASCAR’s competitive peak, he never seemed to get the respect he deserved in his heyday, and I have some theories on that.

It seems like there’s a contingent of fans these days who call any NASCAR driver “mid” (a particular specimen of zoomer parlance that I despise) if they don’t either win 20 races or a title. It seems most people would deny NASCAR Hall of Fame status to anyone who met neither criterion in the Cup Series. I absolutely wouldn’t: there are plenty of drivers who had fewer than 20 wins who were better than drivers who had more. Biffle’s one of them. Furthermore, people make a big deal about marquee race wins still, and he never won one. (No, I don’t agree with the people who have chosen to retcon his 2005 and 2006 Dodge Charger 500 wins at Darlington as Southern 500s; nobody thought NASCAR would eventually decide those counted as Southern 500s until later, and the Southern 500 at that time was perceived as no longer existing.) He was also the winningest Cup Series driver to never win on a short track, and he wasn’t especially strong on plate tracks or road courses either, so I get why people felt meh at the time about him. I bet he’ll suddenly be ushered into the next Hall of Fame class though, and I’ll definitely support it when it happens.

But I don’t really think any of those are the main reasons why he is overshadowed now. I think Biffle is now overshadowed because the era when he was at his peak is not exactly an era most people have a lot of nostalgia for, myself included. I did not like the second half of the 2000s and the entire 2010s in NASCAR very much at all, even though I still watched most of it. In an era full of egotistical blowhards like Tony Stewart, Kevin Harvick, the Busch brothers, Carl Edwards, Clint Bowyer, and eventually Brad Keselowski, he was just kind of mild-mannered. He usually won his races uncontested in absolute butt-kickings, and most of them weren’t that exciting to watch, except for his two Homestead wins and his two Darlington wins. Like Jimmie Johnson and Matt Kenseth, he was one of the last genuine grassroots underdogs who was simply happy to be there. Like them, he also didn’t have a big, flashy image or bombastic personality. Like them, he let his racing do the talking and was pretty modest, and in the social media age, that was not the sexy thing. But he also did not have Johnson or Kenseth’s numbers.

But I always respected him. In fact, I think for most of his career, I overrated him. Based on his 2005 season, I still considered him the best Roush driver too long after that, even when it was no longer tenable after Edwards and Kenseth had clearly eclipsed him in everyone else’s minds but mine. But I think he possibly could’ve matched them if he had started at the same age they did. The fact that he was older than all his contemporary stars meant he naturally had a shorter career and fewer opportunities to win. The fact that he was so loyal to Jack Roush when he maybe shouldn’t have been cost him a lot. The team instantly tanked after Kenseth left in 2013, and then even more so after Edwards left in 2014. By that point, he was too old to sustain Roush, and he just kind of got a raw deal all around. I wonder what might’ve happened if he had started in the Cup Series as early as 2000 or 2001. His minor league NASCAR performance in 1999-2002 was maybe the best of all time for an eventual full-time Cup Series driver (excluding Richie Evans, etc…), and I can’t help thinking most of his Craftsman Truck/Busch seasons were better than most of his Cup seasons. I ended up not rating them quite that way, but I considered it. If he had been around for Roush’s ENTIRE four-year peak in 2002-2005 and already been established at the time Kurt Busch was in actuality, could he have won 25 races and already be in the Hall of Fame and a champion? Quite possibly. But from what I remember, it was Biffle’s choice to race in the Busch Series in 2001 and 2002 rather than going straight to Cup in 2001 as Busch did. Maybe Biffle should’ve jumped to Cup at that moment, too.

For this year’s 1,000 greatest driver entries, I’m going to focus almost entirely on drivers whose careers have finished, or at least drivers whose relevance is over, so I don’t have to keep rewriting columns for current drivers as their careers progress. I will consider writing columns for active drivers this year if their relevance is clearly over (like Graham Rahal or Alexander Rossi), or if they’re still hanging in there but will probably never win again (like Fernando Alonso, although maybe I’m speaking too soon on that now that Adrian Newey is at Aston Martin). But for the most part, this year will be for retired or deceased locks on my list.

I also used to paywall most of the 1,000 greatest driver posts, but I’m going to make a lot more of them free posts now. This post and the next two posts for the other two locks who died in 2025 (Allan Moffat and Rex White) will be free. Afterward, I think I’m going to tend to have the more famous drivers paywalled and the more obscure drivers free.

GREG BIFFLE.…………………………USA

Born: December 23, 1969
Died: December 18, 2025

Best year: 2005
Best drive: 2005 Samsung/RadioShack 500 at Texas Motor Speedway

Arguably both NASCAR’s last great rags-to-riches story and first Northwestern star, Biffle first attracted notice by winning a televised offseason late model race at Tucson Raceway Park in 1995. Announcer Benny Parsons recommended him to team owner Jack Roush, and Biffle remained at Roush Racing for his entire full-time national career. In 1999, Biffle won a then-record nine Craftsman Truck Series races, but lost the title to Jack Sprague by eight points primarily due to a 120-point penalty at Las Vegas. After winning the 2000 title, he again finished second and first in points in the Busch Series in 2001 and 2002, even leading my model in 2001. He clearly had Cup Series-caliber talent years before debuting in Cup.

Despite winning at Daytona, a broken arm hindered Biffle’s 2003 rookie campaign. Roush’s merged engine program with the historically faster Robert Yates Racing gave Biffle enormously powerful superspeedway engines in 2004 and 2005. He won twice in 2004 and upset all the championship contenders at the Homestead season finale. Roush dominated in 2005, placing a record five drivers in the Chase. Although Tony Stewart willed himself to that championship almost single-handedly, Biffle led all drivers in wins (6), natural races led (20), TNL (7), and speed percentile (83.58). At Texas, he started last, led 219 of 334 laps, and won. Another Homestead win propelled him to second in points.

Biffle rarely contended for championships again, as teammates Matt Kenseth and Carl Edwards typically slightly outran him. However, he still won and/or earned top ten points finishes every year from 2003-2013 at NASCAR’s competitive peak. Despite missing the 2006 Chase, Biffle still led in speed percentile. His third-place points finish in 2008 was inflated since he ran far better in the Chase than in the regular season, but Biffle briefly reasserted himself as Roush team leader in 2012, led the points for most of the regular season, and actually earned his highest rating as a Cup regular in my stock car model despite a disappointing Chase. His loyalty to Roush cost him after the team significantly declined when Kenseth and Edwards departed for Joe Gibbs Racing. Although Biffle won 19 Cup Series races and came closer to winning all three NASCAR national series championships than anyone else, he likely would’ve done even better if he’d gotten a full-time Cup ride in his twenties like his contemporaries or if he’d raced in a less competitive era. His only major blemishes are never winning a marquee race or a short track race.

After his retirement, Biffle became renowned for his selflessness, flying his own helicopter to deliver aid to people stranded by Hurricane Helene in 2024. Sadly, Biffle and his wife and children were killed the next year when Biffle’s jet crashed in an emergency landing in Statesville, North Carolina. The crash came as a shock to the NASCAR world since it was the first time a top driver had been killed in a plane crash since Alan Kulwicki and Davey Allison in 1993.

Stock car model: #46 of 319 (.112)

Teammate head-to-heads: 839-796 (0-1 vs. John Andretti, 1-0 vs. Stanton Barrett, 36-25 vs. Trevor Bayne, 13-7 vs. Mike Bliss, 1-0 vs. Chuck Bown, 1-0 vs. Harrison Burton, 27-32 vs. Jeff Burton, 4-0 vs. Ward Burton, 45-58 vs. Kurt Busch, 1-0 vs. Brad Coleman, 0-1 vs. Sheldon Creed, 3-0 vs. Erik Darnell, 166-220 vs. Carl Edwards, 1-1 vs. Jorge Goeters, 24-0 vs. David Green, 1-0 vs. Jason Keller, 138-200 vs. Matt Kenseth, 18-5 vs. Todd Kluever, 58-71 vs. Mark Martin, 79-42 vs. Jamie McMurray, 2-3 vs. Joe Nemechek, 0-1 vs. Brett Moffitt, 2-0 vs. Kyle Petty, 129-57 vs. David Ragan, 1-0 vs. Ryan Reed, 0-1 vs. David Reutimann, 10-13 vs. Joe Ruttman, 1-0 vs. Johnny Sauter, 0-1 vs. Zane Smith, 70-57 vs. Ricky Stenhouse, Jr., 2-0 vs. Kenny Wallace, 5-0 vs. Jon Wood)

Year-by-year: 1999: C, 2000: C, 2001: C, 2002: C-, 2003: C-, 2004: C, 2005: E, 2006: C+, 2008: C+, 2009: C, 2010: C+, 2011: C-, 2012: E-, 2013: C