Greg Biffle excited to return to his Tri-City Raceway roots: ‘That race track is a special place to me’

Greg Biffle was running late.

The date was Aug. 31, 1997, and he needed to get to the driver’s meeting ahead of the NASCAR Northwest Series race at Tri-City Raceway in West Richland, Washington.

However, he was in the middle of a phone call that had the potential to change his life.

“I was talking to the president of Roush, Geoff Smith,” Biffle said. “I’m in my truck at Tri-City talking on the phone with the Roush people, and I missed the driver’s meeting.”

Things progressed quickly for Biffle after that conversation. He signed a contract to join Roush Racing starting with the 1998 NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series season. By 2000, he had captured the Truck Series title and earned a promotion to the NASCAR Xfinity Series.

Two years and one Xfinity Series championship later, Biffle earned another promotion, this time to the NASCAR Cup Series.

For the following 13 years, Biffle was an anchor on Jack Roush’s Cup Series team. He won 19 races at places like Daytona International Speedway, Michigan International Speedway, Darlington Raceway and Homestead-Miami Speedway and finished second in the series standings in 2005.

None of that would have been possible, Biffle says, if not for his days spent racing at places like Tri-City Raceway and nearby Portland Speedway.

He would often split his time competing at the two tracks, typically racing at one Friday and the other Saturday. In 1995, he won track championships at Tri-City and Portland and nearly captured the NASCAR Advance Auto Parts Weekly Series national championship, finishing second to Larry Phillips after losing a tiebreaker.

That season alone, he won 27 times in 43 Weekly Series starts.

All these years, later, Biffle is set to return to Tri-City when the ARCA Menards Series West visits the half-mile tri-oval for the running of the NAPA Auto Care 150 this Saturday night (7:30 p.m. PT / 10:30 p.m. ET on FloRacing).

“That race track is a special place to me. Winning that championship back in ’95 helped me get to where I am today,” Biffle said.

Originally, Biffle was asked by track officials if he would be the Grand Marshal for the 150-lap event. In the back of his mind, though, Biffle wondered if there was an open seat available for him to race, instead.

He started to make some phone calls, which ultimately led him to Sigma Performance Services owner Joe Farré, who has fielded the No. 23 entry for multiple drivers this season.

“I just thought how cool it would be to get back in a car and do it in not such a high-pressure environment. It’s not like a Cup race or a Xfinity race or even a Truck race, but it’s right below that,” Biffle said. “It just interested me, so I said, ‘What the hell.’

“I think a realistic expectation is to get some laps on the race track, hopefully qualify decent and run in the top five. I think that is really a successful night.”

The chance to race again at Tri-City is one Biffle cherishes. There was a time when the track was, much like Portland Speedway, nearly closed for good. Biffle said he tried to buy the track about 20 years ago to save it from closure. That deal never came together, but Tri-City survived and continues to thrive today.

“I tried to buy that race track for about four years. Probably 15, 20 years ago,” Biffle said. “I just loved the race track so much that when they closed it up, I was making a run at it to keep it operating and keep it open. I thought it was going to go away like all these other race tracks did.

“It’s a neat race track, and I’m very, very happy to see racing return to that part of the country.”

Biffle was ultimately forgiven for missing that driver’s meeting at Tri-City on Labor Day weekend in 1997.

As it turns out, he had a pretty good excuse.

“I told them what I was doing, and they were happy to see a Northwest guy get an opportunity,” Biffle said. “They gave me a pass on it.”