Greg Biffle knows time is not his friend.
Biffle, who turns 45 in December, has maybe another 3-5 good years left as a Sprint Cup driver. To that end, he’s signed on with Roush Fenway Racing for the first three of those years.
And while the sponsorship situation on his No. 16 Roush Fenway Racing Ford Fusion for next season is not yet set, Biffle decided that unlike soon-to-be former teammate Carl Edwards, it was a better fit for Biffle to remain at RFR than to go to anywhere else.
With Edwards already announcing that he’ll leave RFR at the end of this season, Biffle will become the team’s lead driver, with youngsters Ricky Stenhouse Jr. and Trevor Bayne as his understudies, in 2015.
“Every driver has opportunities and I was very thankful that I had plenty of opportunities,” Biffle said, according to Ford Racing. “I was coming down to deciding what I was gonna do for the future from other teams and there were some interesting seats open and opportunities.
“But I think internally what happened is as I was deciding what I wanted to do for the future, I think Carl (Edwards) decided that he was gonna move on and then I needed to make a decision what I was gonna do.”
That decision was to remain with RFR through the 2017 season. What happens after that is anyone’s guess, but Biffle now has four more years (including this season) to win that elusive first Sprint Cup championship that he’s been chasing for more than a decade.
And if he does win a Cup crown, Biffle would become the only driver in NASCAR history to ever win championships in all three of the sport’s major pro series: Sprint Cup, Nationwide (2002) and Camping World Trucks (2000).
“I’ve won over 55 races driving there (at RFR) and 19 Cup wins and I just felt like we can get this thing turned around,” Biffle said. “So I made the decision to stay and be the anchor for Roush Fenway, and do another three-year contract, regardless of sponsorship at that point.”
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