Greg Biffle has not raced in the NASCAR Cup Series since 2016, but he hopes to change that with the season-opening Daytona 500. On Monday, NY Racing Team announced Biffle will attempt to qualify for the 500 in the #44 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1, receiving sponsorship from Grambling State University. As the team does not have a charter, he will need to qualify on speed or via Duel finish.
During his fourteen-year run from 2003 to 2016, Biffle was one of the finer drivers in the Cup Series. Competing for what is now RFK Racing, he scored nineteen wins and finished runner-up in the 2005 championship battle. He was released by the team after 2016 as his performance declined over the previous two seasons and moved into dirt track and off-road racing. Although he never won the Daytona 500 in fourteen tries, he claimed the pole in 2004 and his maiden Cup victory came in the 2003 Daytona night race.
Interestingly, NY Racing will not be Biffle’s first time driving a #44, let alone a Chevrolet (he was mainly a Ford driver during his full-time NASCAR career). In 2002, a year before becoming a Cup regular, he ran two of the final three Cup races for Petty Enterprises (the predecessor to Petty GMS Motorsports) in a #44 Chevrolet, finishing twenty-fifth in both.
Since 2018, he runs the Sand Outlaw UTV series and competes sporadically in the Stadium Super Trucks. In the latter, he has four podiums, including a trio of seconds; he ran the 2021 Mid-Ohio NASCAR weekend, finishing fourth and second in the two races.
While much of Biffle’s racing nowadays has been on non-paved surfaces, he returned to NASCAR in 2019 when he entered the Camping World Truck Series round at Texas for Kyle Busch Motorsports. The 2000 series champion won in his first start since 2004, contributing to an effort that propelled the #51 KBM truck to the owners’ championship. He did another one-off the following year at Darlington, finishing nineteenth for GMS Racing.