Greg Biffle closing in on new contract with Roush Fenway Racing — or will we have to ‘wait and see’?

By Feb 14, 2014, 8:12 PM EST
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Jeff Burton left. Kurt Busch left. Mark Martin left. Jamie McMurray left. David Ragan left (well, not by choice but due to lack of sponsorship and downsizing from a four- to a three-car operation).

And then came the biggest defection of all when Matt Kenseth left at the end of 2012.

Although Roush Fenway Racing has been one of the more stable organizations in NASCAR Sprint Cup racing, it has still lost a number of top-level drivers over the last decade.

Without question, the biggest one – and the one that hurt the most – was Kenseth leaving after the 2012 season and moving to Joe Gibbs Racing, which fields Toyotas, Jack Roush’s avowed No. 1 enemy.

While Kenseth won seven races and almost captured the Sprint Cup championship last season in his first year with JGR, Ford-powered RFR cars floundered. Greg Biffle finished a distant ninth in the Chase for the Sprint Cup, Carl Edwards was dead last in the expanded 13-driver Chase field and rookie Ricky Stenhouse Jr. didn’t even make the Chase, finishing 19th.

Given what Kenseth achieved at JGR, you’d think that Biffle and Edwards, both in contract years in 2014, might be looking for greener pastures – if not for more money, then perhaps for better performing race cars and teams. Let’s face it, Ford just hasn’t had the same kind of power in the last couple of years to challenge Chevrolet and Toyota.

Because he likes to play things close to the vest, Edwards has said little about negotiations to extend his current deal with RFR, but that’s also what he did in 2011, when he had his last round of contract talks.

Back then, there was plenty of frenzied chatter of Edwards going elsewhere – ironically enough, the most often talked about team was indeed JGR – but he chose to remain at RFR for another three years.

Will it be the same this year? Will Edwards remain in the RFR fold? That remains to be seen.

But unless contract talks break down or he becomes unhappy with their progress or direction and threatens to take a hike like he did in 2008, Biffle will likely continue wearing RFR colors for the next three years.

“We’ve been in that for about the last half of last year and over the winter talking with (primary sponsor) 3M, and it’s kind of a mutual negotiation,” Biffle said during Thursday’s Daytona 500 Media Day. “So we’re well on our way to probably announcing something, I would think in the first quarter, but we’ll wait and see.”

You always have to wonder when an athlete involved in contract negotiations adds the “we’ll wait and see” disclaimer, but Biffle then gave a disclaimer to his disclaimer.

When asked if he’s confident he’ll be back at RFR in 2015, Biffle said simply, “Oh yeah.”

Guess we’ll wait and see – unless Kenseth lures The Biff or Cousin Carl, for that matter — over to JGR for that long-rumored fourth Sprint Cup team in 2015.

Roger Penske vows new downtown Detroit GP will be bigger than the Super Bowl for city

By Jun 1, 2023, 2:00 PM EDT
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DETROIT – He helped spearhead bringing the town a Super Bowl 17 years ago, but Roger Penske believes the reimagined Chevrolet Detroit GP is his greatest gift to the Motor City.

“It’s bigger than the Super Bowl from an impact within the city,” Penske told NBC Sports. “Maybe not with the sponsors and TV, but for the city of Detroit, it’s bigger than the Super Bowl.

“We’ve got to give back individually and collectively, and I think we as a company in Michigan and in Detroit, it’s something we know how to do. It shows we’re committed. Someone needs to take that flag and run it down through town. And that’s what we’re trying to do as a company. We’re trying to give back to the city.”

After 30 years of being run on Belle Isle, the race course has been moved to a new nine-turn, 1.7-mile downtown layout that will be the centerpiece of an event weekend that is designed to promote a festival and community atmosphere.

There will be concerts in the adjacent Hart Plaza. Local businesses from Detroit’s seven districts have been invited to hawk their wares to new clientele. Boys and Girls Clubs from the city have designed murals that will line the track’s walls with images of diversity, inclusion and what Detroit means through the eyes of youth.

And in the biggest show of altruism, more than half the circuit will be open for free admission. The track is building 4-foot viewing platforms that can hold 150 people for watching the long Jefferson Avenue straightaway and other sections of the track.

Detroit GP chairman Bud Denker, a longtime key lieutenant across Penske’s various companies, has overseen more than $20 million invested in infrastructure.

The race is essentially Penske’s love letter to the city where he made much of his fame as one of Detroit’s most famous automotive icons, both as a captain of industry with a global dealership network and as a racing magnate (who just won his record 19th Indy 500 with Josef Newgarden breaking through for his first victory on the Brickyard oval).

During six decades in racing, Penske, 86, also has run many racetracks (most notably Indianapolis Motor Speedway but also speedways in Michigan, California and Pennsylvania), and much of that expertise has been applied in Detroit.

“And then the ability for us to reach out to our sponsor base, and then the business community, which Bud is tied in with the key executives in the city of Detroit, bringing them all together,” Penske said. “It makes a big difference.

“The Super Bowl is really about the people that fly in for the Super Bowl. It’s a big corporate event, and the tickets are expensive. And the TV is obviously the best in the world. What we’ve done is taken that same playbook but made it important to everyone in Detroit. Anyone that wants to can come to the race for free, can stand on a platform or they can buy a ticket and sit in the grandstands or be in a suite. It’s really multiple choice, but it is giving it to the city of Detroit. I think it’s important when you think of these big cities across the country today that are having a lot of these issues.”

Denker said the Detroit Grand Prix is hoping for “an amazingly attended event” but is unsure of crowd estimates with much of the track offering free viewing. The race easily could handle a crowd of at least 50,000 daily (which is what the Movement Music Festival draws in Hart Plaza) and probably tens of thousands more in a sprawling track footprint along the city’s riverwalk.

Penske is hoping for a larger crowd than Belle Isle, which was limited to about 30,000 fans daily because of off-site parking and restricted fan access at a track that was located in a public park.

The downtown course will have some unique features, including a “split” pit lane on an all-new concrete (part of $15 million spent on resurfaced roads, new barriers and catchfencing … as well as 252 manhole covers that were welded down).

A $5 million, 80,000-square-foot hospitality chalet will be located adjacent to the paddock and pit area. The two-story structure, which was imported from the 16th hole of the Waste Management Open in Phoenix, will offer 70 chalets (up from 23 suites at Belle Isle last year). It was built by InProduction, the same company that installed the popular HyVee-branded grandstands and suites at Iowa Speedway last year.

Penske said the state, city, county and General Motors each owned parts of the track, and their cooperation was needed to move streetlights and in changing apexes of corners. Denker has spent the past 18 months meeting with city council members who represent Detroit’s seven districts, along with Mayor Mike Duggan. Penske said the local support could include an appearance by Michigan Gov. Gretchen Witmer.

Denker and Detroit GP  president Michael Montri were inspired to move the Detroit course downtown after attending the inaugural Music City Grand Prix in Nashville, Tennessee.

“We saw what an impact it made on that city in August of 2021 and we came back from there and said boy could it ever work to bring it downtown in Detroit again,” Denker said. “We’ve really involved the whole community of Detroit, and the idea of bringing our city together is what the mayor and city council and our governor are so excited about. The dream we have is now coming to fruition.

“When you see the infrastructure downtown and the bridges over the roads we’ve built and the graphics, and everything is centered around the Renaissance Center as your backdrop, it’s just amazing.”