It was a school day in Vancouver, Washington, 1986, when the students of Camas High School (Go Papermakers!) were eagerly awaiting the ringing bell that would lead them out the door to the parking lot that meant freedom. Camas Police Chief Don Chaney was there, paying a visit to the school principal. The principal and principal were chatting in the office, which had a window overlooking the parking lot and the street that ran along the front of the school.
There was one student of Camas who knew this point of view very well. He has been to this office several times. He also knew that Cheney was in that office and therefore held the same opinion. Well, the teenager knew exactly what he was doing when he parked his Formula Firebird directly under that office window and began throwing the hammer, leaving a thick, whipped cream cloud of blue tire smoke along the entire length of the road, a cloud so large that for the next five minutes it drifted directly into the view from that office window.
Cheney didn't even have to ask who it was. He knew this car. Hell, his picture was posted on the bulletin board at his police station. And his officers gave the driver of the banana-yellow Pontiac so many tickets that everyone knew him by name.
“Yeah, before the name was famous, it was notorious here,” Cheney recalled in 2006, sitting in the same office and laughing. “Greg Biffle.”
Greg Biffle lived the origin story of stock car racing that we will either write as our ideal NASCAR a film script or for ourselves… if we thought it was truly plausible.
He didn't come from the southeastern bullrings that were NASCAR's incubator. He didn't come from the quirky modified world of the Northeast, the dirt roads of the Midwest, or even the deserts that produced so many drivers and women. As he liked to say: “I was not born on the wrong side of the tracks. I was born on the wrong side of the river. Mississippi Rivers.”
Biffle started riding his motorcycle around town when he was 5 years old. He bought the Firebird when he was 14.
His father eventually took him to Portland Motor Speedway, a half-mile short fairground track with a movie screen in the back lot and a drain cap right in the Turn 4 racing groove. His father's goal was to get him off the street. It worked.
Biff and his friends began building race cars with the stated goal of winning enough local races to attract the attention of NASCAR Cup Series team owners. It didn't work.
By the time he started winning enough, he was too old, already 30. He was also too far away, racing 3,000 miles away from the NASCAR race shops in North Carolina.
With almost zero dollars left in his racing bank account and zero minutes left on the career countdown timer, he towed his late-model street racer to Tucson, Arizona, to take part in an ESPN-produced television series called NASCAR Winter Heat. Benny Parsons, a NASCAR champion turned ESPN analyst, talked with Biffle in the infield at Tucson Speedway and was so impressed that he called Jack Roush, one of the team's owners in North Carolina. Quietly (this was before the Internet was filled with video clips), Roush placed Biffle in one of his NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series rides in 1998.
The guy from the streets of Vancouver is back. In a bad way. He crashed so many F-150s that Roush gave him a “negative incentive.” If he crashed one day and the crew determined it was his fault, it would cost him 10 thousand. If it happens a second time, $20,000. Third? $40,000. He then said to Biffle, “There won’t be a fourth time.”
And it wasn't.
The following season he won nine races and the Trucks title in 2000. The following year he won Xfinity Series Rookie of the Year and then went on to win the title. In 2002, he made his Cup Series debut. The following year, he became the first driver to earn Rookie of the Year honors in all three of NASCAR's national divisions. He finished second to Tony Stewart in the 2005 Cup Series title fight and third to Jimmie Johnson in 2008. By the time his full-time Cup career ended in 2016, he had won 19 times, scored 13 pole positions and finished ninth or better in the season standings six times.
The reality is that he probably shouldn't have won the Portland race in the first place. But he did it, just in the nick of time. He probably shouldn't have tried to go to Tucson because he didn't have the money. But he did it, just in the nick of time. That conversation with BP. Stop the destruction and start winning. And all this at the very last moment, and all this with his career brought to the brink of oblivion.
“You know, today I hear NASCAR fans always say that they have a hard time finding a real old-school driver who had to work hard and not buy a spot in the Cup garage,” Biffle said in 2010, when he finished sixth in the championship standings after winning two races. “Sometimes I want to grab them and shake them and say, 'Dude, I'm here!' Look. I still have fat under my nails. Some of them are from 30 years ago when I was building my own late models, and some are mixed in with some from my truck that I worked on last night.”
Real racers have always known this about Biffle. He first appeared on the NASCAR Hall of Fame ballot two years ago, and in the voting room last spring his name was frequently mentioned by election officials, described as “blue collar” and a “throwback.” Although he ultimately failed, his cause had the kind of progress that in years past meant a “it's about to happen” momentum that paid off for conscripts.
Another word that rang out in this room last May was that it had been attached to Biffle like a nut to a tire for over a year.
Hero.
In late September 2024, after Hurricane Helen dumped unprecedented amounts of floodwater and damage in the same states that had long served as the heartland of NASCAR, Biffle was so moved by the victims' struggle that he jumped into the cockpit of his personal helicopter and flew to Appalachia in search of people to help. He did this without asking or permission. The same spirit of that guy in front of his school, this time aiming not to overtake those in shape, but to help them in their efforts.
He collected stranded victims in the mountains, posted videos of those he couldn't reach in the hopes that someone else could, and dropped supplies anywhere and everywhere they were needed. Biffle did this for weeks.
“The other day a guy asked me: How much does all this cost me?” Biffle said this in the midst of all this, when he was flying dozens of missions a day, most from the same airport where he, his family and three others died in a plane crash Thursday morning. “Dude, do you realize how lucky I am? The life I can live since Jack [Roush] I took a chance, it was my dream. My dream has come true. I have more than I could ever want. How much does it cost me? Think about how much this hurricane cost these people, many of whom are NASCAR fans.
“We've talked about this before, that I'm worried about being able to repay the people who made it possible for me to live this life. Well, maybe this is the answer I've been looking for. Because he definitely found me, didn’t he?”
His last Cup Series start came in 2022. I stood with him during the Daytona 500 pre-race ceremony where he started 28th in an HBCU-sponsored Chevy. He knew he wouldn't win, but he also knew it would likely be his last start in the Great American Race. That morning we talked mostly about the planes flying overhead: the Goodyear Blimp, the USAF Thunderbirds, the times Air Force Once flew over the track. He was obsessed with being in the air.
This is also very old school NASCAR. Biffle was a product of the 2000s, when every racer owned at least one plane, and many also owned a helicopter. Even as his career moved further and further into the rearview mirror, unlike many of his contemporaries, he kept his plane. He loved flying too much to not figure out how to continue doing it.
Back in the day, NASCAR legends such as Curtis Turner and Joe Weatherly were known for racing themselves despite little or no formal training. They flapped their wings as they raced toward the highway and scanned the roads below for navigation. Cale Yarborough once simultaneously flew his plane while chasing away a bear that he thought was sleeping in the back seat but woke up and moved into the cockpit.
Private air travel is a necessity for a racer, especially at the peak of his career and sponsorship commitments, but what gets lost in what becomes a routine is that it is also intimidating. There is a danger that we forget about until something goes wrong, someone becomes careless, or a lack of experience that once seemed charming suddenly becomes a danger. Alan Kalvitsky and Davey Ellison. Hendrick Motorsport. A near tragic incident involving Dale Earnhardt Jr. and his family. Even Roush, who failed more than once, for which Biffle liked to make fun of his old boss.
In other words, NASCAR flying is a lot like NASCAR racing itself. We get so used to risk that we forget about it until someone is taken away. Greg Biffle and six other passengers on that plane were taken from us.
But the real lesson here is to appreciate the here and now. Hang your arms around the necks of those you love while you can. Take this chance and try to make your dreams come true, even if they seem as far away as Vancouver, Washington, from Daytona International Speedway. And heck, why not drop the hammer in front of the principal's office in front of the police chief?
The last time I spoke to Greg Biffle was two weeks ago. I drove through Chimney Rock, North Carolina, an area he had frequented since Helen, and I wanted to tell him that they still couldn't believe all he had done for them.
“Use what you earned to help those who lost what they earned,” Biff told me. “We only have one chance at this deal. Why waste it?
