Biffle: “Tracks are like people”

Greg Biffle made one heck of an analogy during Wednesday’s Goodyear tire test at Kentucky Speedway.

“[Tracks] are literally as different as each person in here,” Biffle said. “Even though both guys might be five foot ten, weigh 175 pounds, they’re just different. That’s the way the mile-and-a-halfs are, they’re just different. That’s the way this thing is, you can’t compare it to anything. But it’s a lot of fun.”

Biffle in the media center at Kentucky. I wanted to start a "Stick with the Biff" cheer for John Roberts of SPEED TV but I figured no one else would have joined in

Each track, said Biffle, has its own personality, has its own characteristics and specialties, just like each of you reading the blog right now.

“A lot of people don’t understand. They think, ‘Cookie cutter’ or ‘oh it’s a mile and a half’ and a racetrack is as different as each person standing in this room,” said Biffle. “Each track has its own personality. It’s completely different.

“It’s different how you enter each corner, how you exit it, none of them are the same. You could try to copy this racetrack with the best engineering you have and you would not be able to make it exactly the same. I promise you.”

Biffle, in an all-white test car, turned some laps during Wednesday's Goodyear tire test

Just like no two snowflakes being the same, no two racetracks are the same either.

“It’s been tried over and over again and it hasn’t been done to copy something exactly. And truthfully it wouldn’t be any fun if they were exactly the same,” he said.

A wide shot of Kentucky Speedway during Wednesday's Goodyear tire test

Kentucky is almost exactly identical to Kansas in length, banking and shape, but that doesn’t mean that they’re anywhere near alike.

In fact in 2009, Carl Edwards said that Kentucky felt more like a short track to him. Logano said on Wednesday that this test couldn’t have come at a better time though. The Sprint Cup makes its first-ever June stop this weekend in Kansas.

“We’ve run decent there but coming here and testing and trying some new things out for this type of racetrack—a flatter mile and a half with a lot of speed still—I mean we’re still 200 mph or so around this place,” Logano noted. “So you’ve still got a lot of speed but we don’t have the banking like we did last weekend at Charlotte.”

No matter what you try to do, no matter how you try to copy a racetrack, it’ll never be the same as its prototype. Greg Biffle pointed that out, and it’s a fact we should all keep in mind when we try to predict who will win the Cup race at Kentucky in July.

Kansas might give us a good idea this weekend, but it won’t be an exact indication of who will contend for the win in the inaugural “Quaker State 400” in July.