Working Vacation

The shortest off-season in all of sports offers little rest for NASCAR stars, but few drivers are as busy as Greg Biffle

"You ready for the story?"

Greg Biffle is sitting aboard a 41-foot fishing boat, bobbing in the waters off of Palm Beach Shores' Sailfish Marina ("Where the Season Never Ends"). For many folks, deep-sea fishing in Florida would make a great day off. But Biffle is a NASCAR driver, and when his 10-month season wraps, he doesn't exactly get a holiday. Not even when he's nursing a mild concussion and a dislocated shoulder.

Instead, Biffle is on the job today, fishing with the winner of Luhrs' "Hook Up with Greg Biffle!" contest. Okay, make that trying to fish. An early December storm has whipped up 13-foot waves in the Atlantic (the sight of which warrants a "Wow!" from the boat's captain and a "Holy smokes!" from Biffle), so the Fish Bones is rerouted for a threehour tour of the gentler Intracoastal Waterway. That means the only thing lucky angler Mike Mazza, a soft-spoken retired police sergeant from New Jersey, will catch is a glimpse of the late Dale Earnhardt's docked yacht, Sunday Money.

Without the prospects of any good fish tales, Biffle engages his shipmates with small talk ranging from his penchant for Steven Seagal movies to his love of wake surfing. And then there's "the story." Two days ago, on Dec. 7, Biffle was up on the wheel at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, testing tires for Goodyear. On Lap 37 of a 40-lap run, he blew a right front entering Turn 1 and met the wall at 204 mph. He then rode that wall through Turn 2, which is when he woke up surrounded by smoke.

"The car was on fire, big-time," he says. "She was hurt." The brakes were busted, so Biffle got out of gear, took off his harness and bolted as soon as the car stopped. When the ambulance arrived, he told the paramedics he felt fine. But later, while watching TV in the lounge, he discovered he too was hurt. He saw color only on the left side of people's faces; the rest was in shadow. Biffle soon realized he had a concussion. On the plane back to Charlotte that evening, he suspected he also had a dislocated right shoulder (something the former Washington state wrestling champ had suffered before).

Biffle says it was the hardest crash of his career, one he might not have survived if not for improvements in NASCAR's safety standards in the six years since Earnhardt's death. So it's easy to forgive him if he takes a few extra seconds to recall the name of the track where Roush Racing holds its annual Christmas party (Lowe's Motor Speedway). And it's okay if he never manages to suggest the title of a "good" Seagal movie.

It's also easy to understand why Biffle quickly remembers the old adage "A bad day on the water is better than a good day at work." Any top Nextel Cup driver will tell you there is no real off-season—not with personal appearances, commercials, photo shoots and testing sessions from practically the time the final checkered flag falls at Homestead-Miami in November to when the green flag waves at Daytona in February. And while the two months in between are a time of transition for every driver, the 37-yearold Biffle is staring down what could be the busiest, most important hiatus of his career. In addition to a new co-owner (the Boston Red Sox are buying nearly half of Roush Racing), he has a new crew, a new sponsor and a new role now that senior driver Mark Martin has left for a gig at Ginn Racing.

Change is coming, big-time.

How disappointing was 2006 for Greg Biffle? Three months into the longest schedule in pro sports, crew chief Doug Richert had already taken to jokingly asking him if he'd slit a wrist yet. And no one was laughing at season's end, when Pat Tryson was named Richert's replacement for 2007. After winning six Nextel Cup races in 2005—and finishing only 35 points shy of becoming the first man to win championships in all three of NASCAR's top divisions—Biffle parked in Victory Lane just twice last year, and slipped to 13th.

"One way of getting behind is by being really good," Biffle explains. "It's easy to say, Gosh, my grass has been perfectly green for five years. Why should I test the soil? And then it dies, and you're like, What happened? Well, it needed lime, and you didn't know. Our competition went to work because we beat their asses. We spanked them. But now we're working night and day to try to catch up."

In fact, about the only one at Roush having a slow off-season is the gift shop cashier peddling used lug nuts for a dollar. Team owner Jack Roush saw his rivals gain an edge last year using simulation technology to compensate for NASCAR's limit on track testing, so he's beefed up his engineering staff. The new over-the-wall guys practiced pit stops three times a week in December, upping it to five in January. The boys in the shop are busy building the cars Biffle will test at Daytona (Jan. 8-10) and Vegas (Jan. 29-30). They also must build the elusive Car of Tomorrow, which NASCAR will run in 16 of 36 Cup races this year, starting at Bristol in April. No one seems that happy about transitioning to the more cumbersome ride, but they're coming to terms with it. "If NASCAR decided they wanted tricycles," Roush says, "I'd try to have the fastest tricycle."

Sitting in an office at Roush Racing's Concord, N.C. headquarters on Dec. 12, Biffle tries not to use the word "overwhelming." But The Biff looks bushed. "I'm just thinkin' about all the stuff I gotta do in the next four days," he says. "Kinda gets over … " He stops himself. Biffle's smart enough to know that a man whose disappointing season won him $4.6 million won't get much public pity. Still, nobody would blame him if he let the O-word slip. His schedule over the next 96 hours includes a personal appearance for Stocks for Tots near his home in Mooresville, N.C.; a meet-and-greet at a Daytona boat show; a two-day photo shoot for sponsor 3M at Roush's on-site studio; the company Christmas party at the Speedway Club; and a holiday mixer hosted by Dick Cheney (a big fan of Biffle's 2006 primary sponsor, the National Guard). In DC, the driver will mingle with Cheney's daughters and have his picture taken with actor Isaiah Washington, who plays Dr. Burke on Grey's Anatomy.

In the past eight days, Biffle has been through a photo session in High Point, N.C., for Ameriquest Mortgage, the new main sponsor of his No. 16 Ford Fusion; a "kinda funny" commercial shoot in LA for Jackson Hewitt, the official tax service of NASCAR; the ill-fated tire test in Vegas; an MRI machine in Charlotte; the aborted angling in Palm Beach; and a "really funny" commercial in Orlando in which "Grandma" tries to lick the cream off an Oreo faster than Biffle. Spoiler alert: Grandma wins.

If you're wondering when Biffle will find the time to do something that will actually help him go faster on the track, so is he. His top priority at the moment is to schedule a meeting with Roush engineers to dissect the real hit he took in Sin City: the loss of Chassis 239. She's been laid to rest in the Roush garage with "DUN" written in the dusty ash on her right rear quarter panel.

"The car is the focal point, ain't it?" says Biffle's longtime spotter, Joel Edmonds, as he surveys the crowd of employees gathered to pay their respects and hear "the story" (and, if they're part of Biffle's old crew, to receive an engraved hunting knife for Christmas). Biffle, peering into the charred carnage, looks like he's mourning. "I am," he says. "Some cars are just better than others. People ask why. Well, they're handmade. We have detailed notes, and we try to copy stuff as accurately as possible, but the reality is, some cars just act different."

This particular car acted like she belonged out front. She'd given Biffle six of his career 11 Cup wins. More important, in this time of transition, she was a comfort—the one machine he was excited for Tryson to work with as crew chief. They brought her to Vegas, along with one of Tryson's favorite rides, to compare and contrast, and to determine what kind of car they need to build. Now, there's an added urgency, not merely to replicate 239's success, but to replace her. "Before it was like, let's figure this out," Biffle says. "Now it's like, we have to figure this out." Unfortunately, when the engineering powwow is held a day later, they don't unlock any mysteries. There is, however, some good news: Biffle had Tryson's car haulin' ass, too.

TO GET in good with a NASCAR driver, don't waste his time. Photographer Walter Arce understands this truism. He's the guy who previously captured Biffle looking longingly off into the distance while covered in Post-its. When he shoots him on Dec. 13, with what seems like half of 3M's 55,000 products, Arce employs his trusty two-shot-per-pose rule and snaps 500 frames in three hours. That's why Biffle doesn't mind cutting up as he holds a sign that reads, "Leak Resistant." After all, he says, "You gotta have a little fun at Christmas."

Biffle usually keeps his wry sense of humor under wraps, which may explain why he has a lower profile than some less talented drivers. But if he and his equally low-key pal Matt Kenseth are to become the new leaders of Roush Racing, they'll have to show the public more. In this sport, it's not enough to drive your car sideways better than anyone else; racers need to connect with fans. "Greg's not the pretty boy, not the bully," says his girlfriend of nine years, Nicole Lunders. "I think he and Matt get overlooked sometimes. People say, 'Oh, Matt, he's so dull,' and blah, blah, blah. You gotta get to know these guys. It's hard, because they're not gonna open themselves up and joke all the time. I mean, not everybody's Kenny Wallace."

Hell, not everybody's Lunders. Last April, after Kurt Busch slammed Biffle into the wall at Texas, Lunders marched to Busch's pit box and jabbed her finger in the direction of his future wife, Eva Bryan. "I said, 'Eva, I know what happened had nothing to do with you, but you can talk to him.' And she was like, uh, uh, uh … And that's when I said, 'You can talk to him!' I turned around, and there's a TV camera, and I'm like, Ohmygod. Then I'm walking down the pits, and I hear cheering. I look up at the JumboTron, and there's me. It was so horrifying." (Biffle, who saw the whole thing replayed on TV in the infield care center, just shrugged it off, knowing that it looked worse than it really was.)

If you want to see Biffle uncensored, you'll have to head to his vacation home in San Carlos, Mexico, where he docks his own 41-foot Luhrs convertible, Little Loose (because that's how he likes his race cars). Or roll up to his property in North Carolina's South Mountains, where he keeps six four-wheelers so visitors can check out the trails he's built.

Or better yet, catch him on the couch at the Lake Norman home he shares with Lunders and four dogs—two boxers and two mixed—each of which had a Christmas stocking hanging on the fireplace. (Biffle once tried to seat his oldest dog at the Easter dinner table, reasoning, "Well, Foster's gotta eat.") The couple have flown them to races in Biffle's private jet, and once to the vet in his helicopter. They've hired a pet nanny so the pooches stay welladjusted while stuck at home. Biffle even tried to freeze Foster's sperm: It didn't work, but Foster still has offspring out there, like Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s dog, Killer. With that kind of devotion, it's no shock how Biffle and Lunders spend the little free time they have. In 2005, they formed the Greg Biffle Foundation for Animals to support no-kill shelters with sales of their "NASCAR Pets" calendar.

As busy as the off-season is, it's still a time when every driver eventually slows down long enough to look at the big picture. So when Biffle reported to a Daytona test in early January, he had a new story to tell. And this time, he didn't go down in flames. Over the holidays, while opening gifts at his parents' house in Vancouver, Wash., he finally asked Lunders to be Mrs. Biffle. She has already planned a small, midweek ceremony in October, during the heart of Biffle's run in The Chase.

Yup. Change is coming for Greg Biffle in 2007. Big-time.

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