Greg Biffle is no Joey Logano fan....and he explains why

   Greg Biffle: he's had some run-ins with Joey Logano too, and it looks like the two still aren't seeing eye to eye on much (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)
  

   By Mike Mulhern
   mikemulhern.net

   BROOKLYN, Mich.
   So Joey Logano, after a fairly quiet rookie season, has blossomed into a full-fledged controversy this spring – run-ins with Greg Biffle and with Kevin Harvick, the most recent at Pocono Sunday.
   And Friday the verbal fireworks continued, with just about everyone – except Carl Edwards, who eventually was even drawn into the fray – offering two cents worth.
   Biffle made his case plainly and clearly, without any hint of apologies:  
    "Yeah, it does seem like he is the common denominator in the deal," Biffle said.
   "I would have to gather that it might be some of his doing, if I had to guess.
    "I have had a few run-ins over the years. There are times where you race, and times where you have to give just a little.
    "I watched the Nationwide race (at Bristol in March), and I watched him chop off Kevin Harvick for 15 laps. Kevin had his nose in there two or three times, and Joey chopped it to the bottom.
    "I knew that was only going to go on for so long.
     "I could have written him a letter and put it in the mail and sent it to him to let him know. 
     "He was going to have a problem eventually. On the last lap, he had a problem...and doesn't understand why. 
     "If you don't understand why you have a problem, then you have a serious problem. 
     "If you understand that you probably should have given some racing room, then you lick your wounds and go onto the next week.
      "I saw Kevin (at Pocono) not give him any room getting into that corner (when the incident occurred). But I am willing to bet if you watch the laps before that, Kevin was quite a bit faster and may have been beside him a couple times.
    "At Kansas (last fall) I had the same issue (with Logano) -- I had a run on the bottom....He (Logano) dropped it down there and door-slammed me.
     "And I finished ninth.
      "He felt like there was nothing wrong with that. 
     "Joey is a great driver. He has a lot of speed and a lot of talent.
      "But we have all been in those situations. He will come around."
     Biffle says he tries to give newcomers more leeway usually, but says Logano takes more than he gives.
     "I give the young guys in the Nationwide series the benefit of the doubt, because they don't have that experience," Biffle says.
    "You have to develop a rapport with racing around guys.
     "And if you mirror-drive somebody and chop them off and run them out of room for 10 laps, they are going to spin you out and put you in the fence.
     "That is just the way it has always been in this sport.
      "You have to give the guy room to race.
      "You don't have to pull over and let him go. But you have to find that middle-ground...and figure out when a guy shows up in your mirror he didn't just plop down out of the sky."
      Ironically Biffle and Harvick were once bitter rivals, in just this same way. But they've managed to work things out.
       "What usually happens is that you have some kind of crash like this, and you are cussing at each other, or slinging mud...and then you race each other fine from then on," Biffle says.
    "A lot of times it isn't an issue.
     "Normally that is how it gets resolved -- It goes from an extreme to treating each other with respect.
    "I get along with Kevin fine. We both understand that we have to race each other and give each other room."

     [Note: You can use Twitter as an easy headline service for mikemulhern.net stories, with our instant Tweets to your mobile as soon as our newest NASCAR story is filed. And mikemulhern.net is mobile-friendly for viewing. You can also use the orange RSS feed button as a quickie headline service on your laptop or home computer for mikemulhern.net stories, by creating a Live Bookmark RSS feed on your web browser's toolbar. Or you can create a Google Alert for mikemulhernnet.]