Texas could be big opportunity for Greg Biffle - MotorSportsTalk

With the Chase Grid steadily filling up early on in this 2014 NASCAR Sprint Cup championship, the talk has shifted to the formidable competitors that have yet to lock themselves into the postseason with a win.

Six different drivers have won in as many races this season, and guys like Matt Kenseth, Jimmie Johnson, and Jeff Gordon will be threats to become the seventh in Sunday’s Duck Commander 500 at Texas Motor Speedway.

But let’s not forget about Greg Biffle, who surely must be motivated a little bit after seeing Roush Fenway Racing teammate Carl Edwards effectively make the Chase a few weeks back at soggy Bristol.

“The Biff” is the most recent RFR winner at Texas, claiming his second career win on the 1.5-mile oval back in the spring of 2012.

Furthermore, he’s been steady at this track with 10 Top-10 finishes in his last 11 Cup starts there; the one time he didn’t hit the Top 10 in that span was last fall’s race and even then, he wasn’t far off in 12th.

He may not immediately pop into your head as a contender for this weekend like Kenseth, Johnson, or Gordon, but he definitely bears watching.

“As a team we are looking to gain momentum, get back on track and get a good run at Texas,” said Biffle, who has led 733 laps at TMS in his career (a personal best for him and No. 2 overall).

“A win is important for us at this stage in the game, but so is a Top-5 finish and to run competitively. I feel really good where we are at; leading laps at Martinsville was great for us. We just need to close the deal and this is one of our best tracks.”

Biffle can say that for his entire RFR team as a whole. NBCSN analyst Jeff Burton won the first Sprint Cup race at Texas back in 1997 for the Roush camp, and since then, they’ve earned eight more Cup wins at TMS.

And when you talk about all three NASCAR national series – Cup, Nationwide, and Camping World Truck – RFR drivers have netted 18 wins, 74 Top-5s, and a total of 3,478 laps led at TMS.

But the big key will be whether RFR can find its intermediate track groove again. In the series’ most recent race on a 1.5-mile oval at Las Vegas, Edwards earned a strategy-assisted Top 5 while Biffle and Ricky Stenhouse Jr. finished in mid-pack.

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INDIANAPOLIS — The first Indy 500 victory for Josef Newgarden also was the richest in race history from a record 2023 purse of just more than $17 million.

The two-time NTT IndyCar Series champion, who continued his celebration Monday morning at Indianapolis Motor Speedway earned $3.666 million for winning the 107th running of the Greatest Spectacle in Racing.

The purse and winner’s share both are the largest in the history of the Indianapolis 500.

It’s the second consecutive year that the Indy 500 purse set a record after the 2022 Indy 500 became the first to crack the $16 million mark (nearly doubling the 2021 purse that offered a purse of $8,854,565 after a crowd limited to 135,000 because of the COVID-19 pandemic).

The average payout for IndyCar drivers was $500,600 (exceeding last year’s average of $485,000).

Indianapolis Motor Speedway owner Roger Penske, whose team also fields Newgarden’s No. 2 Dallara-Chevrolet, had made raising purses a priority since buying the track in 2020. But Penske but was unable to post big money purses until the race returned to full capacity grandstands last year.

The largest Indy 500 purse before this year was $14.4 million for the 2008 Indy 500 won by Scott Dixon (whose share was $2,988,065). Ericsson’s haul made him the second Indy 500 winner to top $3 million (2009 winner Helio Castroneves won $3,048,005.

Runner-up Marcus Ericsson won $1.043 million after falling short by 0.0974 seconds in the fourth-closest finish in Indy 500 history.

The 107th Indy 500 drew a crowd of at least 330,000 that was the largest since the sellout for the 100th running in 2016, and the second-largest in more than two decades, according to track officials.

“This is the greatest race in the world, and it was an especially monumental Month of May featuring packed grandstands and intense on-track action,” Penske Entertainment president and CEO Mark Miles said in a release. “Now, we have the best end card possible for the 107th Running of the Indianapolis 500: a record-breaking purse for the history books.”

Benjamin Pedersen was named the Indy 500 rookie of the year, earning a $50,000 bonus.

The race’s purse is determined through contingency and special awards from IMS and IndyCar. The awards were presented Monday night in the annual Indy 500 Victory Celebration at the JW Marriott in downtown Indianapolis.

The payouts for the 107th Indy 500:

1. Josef Newgarden, $3,666,000
2. Marcus Ericsson, $1,043,000
3. Santino Ferrucci, $481,800
4. Alex Palou, $801,500
5. Alexander Rossi, $574,000
6. Scott Dixon, $582,000
7. Takuma Sato, $217,300
8. Conor Daly, $512,000
9. Colton Herta, $506,500
10. Rinus VeeKay, $556,500
11. Ryan Hunter‐Reay, $145,500
12. Callum Ilott, $495,500
13. Devlin DeFrancesco, $482,000
14. Scott McLaughlin, $485,000
15. Helio Castroneves, $481,500
16. Tony Kanaan, $105,000
17. Marco Andretti, $102,000
18. Jack Harvey, $472,000
19. Christian Lundgaard, $467,500
20. Ed Carpenter, $102,000
21. Benjamin Pedersen (R), $215,300
22. Graham Rahal, $565,500*
23. Will Power, $488,000
24. Pato O’Ward, $516,500
25. Simon Pagenaud, $465,500
26. Agustín Canapino (R), $156,300
27. Felix Rosenqvist, $278,300
28. Kyle Kirkwood, $465,500
29. David Malukas, $462,000
30. Romain Grosjean, $462,000
31. Sting Ray Robb (R), $463,000
32. RC Enerson (R), $103,000
33. Katherine Legge, $102,000

*–Broken down between two teams, $460,000 Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing, $105,500 Dreyer & Reinbold Racing/Cusick Motorsports