It was 1986-ish in Vancouver, Washington, a school day, as the students of Camas High (Go Papermakers!) were anxiously waiting for the bell to ring them out the door, into the parking lot that signified freedom. Camas police chief Don Chaney was there, paying a visit to the school principal. The chief and the principal were chatting in an office that had a window that overlooked that parking lot and the street that ran alongside the front of the school.
There was one particular Camas underclassman who knew that view very well. He had been in that office more than a few times. He also knew that Chaney was in that office and thus also had that view. So, the teenager knew exactly what he was doing when he eased his Formula Firebird directly beneath that office window and proceeded to drop the hammer, laying down a whipped-cream-thick cloud of blue tire smoke the length of that road, a cloud so large that it spent the next five minutes drifting directly into that office window's view.
Chaney didn't even have to ask who it was. He knew the car. Hell, he had a photo of it posted on the bulletin board of his police station. And his officers had issued so many tickets to the driver of that banana yellow Pontiac that they all knew him on a first-name basis.
"Yes, before that name was famous, around here it was infamous," Chaney recalled in 2006, sitting in that same office and laughing. "Greg Biffle."
Greg Biffle lived the stock car racing origin story that we would either write as our perfect NASCAR movie script, or for ourselves ... if we thought it was actually believable.
He hailed not from the Southeastern bullrings that were NASCAR's incubator. He didn't race in from the funky modified world of the Northeast, the dirt tracks of the Midwest or even the high deserts that have produced so many wheelmen and women. As he liked to say, "I wasn't born on the wrong side of the tracks. I was born on the wrong side of the river. The Mississippi River."
Biffle started blasting around town on a motorcycle when he was 5 years old. He bought the Firebird when he was 14.
Eventually, his father took him to Portland Speedway, a fairgrounds half-mile short track with a drive-in movie screen on the backstretch and a drain cover squarely in the Turn 4 racing groove. Dad's goal was to get him off the streets. It worked.
Biff and his friends started building racecars with the stated goal of winning enough local races to catch the eye of NASCAR Cup Series team owners. That didn't work.
By the time he started winning enough, he was too old, already pushing 30. He was also too far away, racing 3,000 miles from the NASCAR race shops of North Carolina.
With nearly zero dollars remaining in his racing bank account and zero minutes remaining on his career countdown clock, he towed his late model street stock to Tucson, Arizona, to participate in a made-for-ESPN TV series titled NASCAR Winter Heat. NASCAR-champion-turned-ESPN-analyst Benny Parsons chatted with Biffle in the Tucson Raceway infield and was so impressed that he called Jack Roush, one of those team owners back in North Carolina. Sight unseen (this was before the internet was jammed full of video clips), Roush put Biffle in one of his NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series rides in 1998.
The kid from the streets of Vancouver came back. In a bad way. He wrecked so many F-150s, Roush presented him with a "negative incentive." If he wrecked once and the crew determined it was his fault, it would cost him 10 grand. If it happened a second time, $20,000. A third? $40,000. Then he told Biffle, "There will not be a fourth time."
And there wasn't.
He won nine races the following season and a Trucks title in 2000. The next year he won Rookie of the Year in the Xfinity Series and also followed that up with a title. In 2002, he made his Cup Series debut. The next year, he became the first driver to win Rookie of the Year in all three of NASCAR's national divisions. He finished second to Tony Stewart in the 2005 Cup Series title fight and third behind Jimmie Johnson in 2008. By the time his full-time Cup career wound down in 2016, he had won 19 times, collected 13 pole positions and finished ninth or better in the season standings six times.
The reality is that he probably shouldn't have ever won races at Portland. But he did, 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, just in the nick of time. That conversation with BP. Stopping the wrecking and starting the winning. All just in the nick of time, and all with his career pushed right up to the edge of oblivion.
"You know, I hear NASCAR fans today always saying that they have a hard time finding a true old-school driver that had to grind their way instead of buying their way into the Cup garage," Biffle said in 2010, when he finished sixth in the championship standings, having won two races. "Sometimes I want to grab them and shake them and say, 'Dude, I'm right here!' Look. I still have grease under my nails. Some of it is from 30 years ago building my own late models, and it's mixed with some from my truck I was working on last night."
Real racers have always known that 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 mentioned often by the voting panel, described as "blue collar" and "throwback." Although he ultimately came up short, his case carried the kind of forward progress that in years past has signified an "it'll happen soon" momentum that has paid off for inductees.
Another word that came up in that room last May is one has been attached to Biffle like a lugnut to a tire for more than a year now.
Hero.
In late September 2024, after Hurricane Helene unleashed an unprecedented amount of floodwater and damage to the same states that have long served as the heart of NASCAR, Biffle was so moved by the struggle of those affected that he jumped into the cockpit of his personal helicopter and flew into the Appalachians looking for people to help. He did so without request or permission. The same spirit of that kid in front of his high school, this time seeking not to outrun those in uniform, but to aid their efforts.
He plucked stranded victims off mountains, posted videos of those he couldn't get to in the hopes that someone else could, and dropped supplies anywhere and everywhere they were needed. Biffle did that for weeks.
"I had a guy ask me the other day: How much is all of this costing me?" Biffle said at the height of it all, when he was flying dozens of missions per day, most out of the same airport where he, his family and three others died in a plane crash Thursday morning. "Man, do you realize how fortunate I have been? The life I have been able to live since Jack [Roush] took a chance on me, that was my dream. My dream came true. I have more than I ever could have wanted. How much is this costing me? Think about how much this hurricane has cost those people up there, and so many of them are NASCAR fans.
"We have talked about this before, that I worry about being able to give back to the people who are the reason I have been able to have this life. Well, maybe this is the answer I was looking for. Because it sure found me, didn't it?"
His last Cup Series start was back in 2022. I was standing with him during the prerace ceremonies for the Daytona 500, where he was starting 28th in an HBCU-sponsored Chevy. He knew wasn't going to win, but he also knew this was probably his last start in the Great American Race. That morning, we talked mainly about the aircraft flying overhead: the Goodyear Blimp, the U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds, the times that Air Force Once has buzzed the track. He was obsessed with being in the air.
That, too, is very old-school NASCAR. Biffle was a product of the 2000s, when every racer owned at least one airplane and many had a helicopter, too. Even as his career was moving further into the rearview mirror, unlike so many of his contemporaries, he kept his aircraft. He loved flying too much not to figure out a way to keep on doing it.
Back in the day, NASCAR legends such as Curtis Turner and Joe Weatherly were known for flying themselves to races, despite little or no formal training. They would bang wings as they raced to the track and eyeball the roads below for navigation. Cale Yarborough once simultaneously flew his plane while fending off a bear that he thought was asleep in the back but had woken up and moved into the cockpit.
Private air travel is a necessity to live a racer's life, especially at the peak of their careers and sponsor obligations, but lost amid what becomes routine is that it is also scary stuff. There is danger that we forget about until something goes wrong, someone gets careless or that lack of experience that once seemed charming suddenly becomes exposed as danger. Alan Kulwicki and Davey Allison. Hendrick Motorsports. The near-tragic incident involving Dale Earnhardt Jr. and his family. Even Roush, who has crashed more than once, for which Biffle loved to poke fun at his old boss.
In other words, NASCAR flying is much like NASCAR racing itself. We become so used to the risk that we forget about it, until someone is taken away. Greg Biffle and the six others on that plane were taken away from us.
But the real lesson here is to appreciate the here and now. Hug the necks of the ones you love while you can. Take those chances to try to make your dreams come true, even if they seem as far away as Vancouver, Washington, is to Daytona International Speedway. And hell, why not drop the hammer in front of the principal's office with the police chief looking?
The last time I talked with Greg Biffle was two weeks ago. I had driven through Chimney Rock, North Carolina, an area that he frequented after Helene, and I wanted to tell him that they still couldn't believe everything he'd done for them.
"Use what you earned to help those who lost what they earned," The Biff said to me. "We only get one shot at this deal. Why waste it?"