Greg Biffle versus Joey Logano: This thing doesn't look like it's over

  Greg Biffle is not a guy you want to get riled....and he's riled (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)
  

   By Mike Mulhern
   mikemulhern.net

   CONCORD, N.C.
   Greg Biffle doesn't like Joey Logano's attitude.
   Logano is a 19-year-old rookie, and he's just won two straight NASCAR Nationwide races, at Kansas and California…and in both events he had bad run-ins with Biffle.
   Biffle is a veteran, 20 years Logano's elder, and he has been around the block a few times. And since it took Biffle, from out in the Pacific Northwest, quite a while to catch somebody's eye and land a NASCAR ride, he's probably not that hot about kids coming in and getting plumb rides right off the bad.
    At Kansas, Saturday, Biffle says Logano ran him too hard, left him in the wall, and went on to win.
    At Fontana, Saturday, Biffle returned the favor, squeezed Logano up next to the wall. Logano bounced off, with damage, but got enough repairs to rally and win.
    The two have apparently not yet made up.
   Biffle wasn't really apologetic about his actions at Fontana, but he insists he wasn't trying to put Logano in the wall, just run him out of room, the way he says Logano ran him out of room at Kansas.
   "I probably shouldn't have run Joey out of room…or run him so tight at the end of the straightaway at California down the backstretch," Biffle says.  "It's really bumpy up there.
   "I watched the video: I squeezed him up, and it looked like he hit the fence and then came back down and hit the side of me.
   "But at Kansas he drove down in the corner three-wide, smashed my fender in and smashed me against the guy on the outside of me, and drove off and won the race.  We were catching Kyle Busch and felt we had a car to win with, and I fell back and finished fifth. I could barely hang on until the end of the race…and didn't have a pit stop to come in and fix my car. 
    "I talked to Joey after the (Kansas) race and said 'What's most disappointing for me is to race a young guy like you, that has a lot of talent and a lot of ability, and something like that goes on on the track and you don't come over and say anything to a guy: 'Hey, sorry I messed your race up. Sorry I ran into you. Didn't think we would get together; thought we had more room.'
   "Something like that. 
    "I think you need to pay a little more respect to the veterans in this sport.
    "He chopped down in front of Tony Stewart at Dover, and that didn't work out for him.
    "I was pretty angry…so I just squeezed him out of room. I didn't run him into the fence on purpose. I just meant to put a little squeeze on him, like he did to me at Kansas – I had nowhere to go. And I wanted to put him in that situation and see what he thought about having nowhere to go and having to keep the wheel straight, with not a lot of room to race. 
    "We made more contact than I certainly expected. You can see he bounced off the wall and came down. 
    "You can blame it on me for just plain running him into the wall, but that's not the way it happened. 
     "I shouldn't have done that.
   "But he worked on his car and fixed it, and was able to come back.
   "Unfortunately for me, at Kansas it was the last run of the day, and I didn't have an opportunity to fix my car."
  
  

  Denny Hamlin, known for aggressive driving, says he likes to talk things out with his rivals before things get out of hand (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)
  

   Maybe Logano can ask teammate Denny Hamlin for advice.
   "I've learned the hard way," Hamlin says, looking back to his own rookie season in Cup in 2006.  "Mark Martin took me out my rookie year at Martinsville…and I talked to him afterwards, and he said 'Well, you raced me hard, so I took you out.'
    "Since then I've communicated -- through text message or phone calls -- to most of my competitors and said 'What do you expect from me as a competitor?'
    "'I want to know when we catch each other in traffic what do you expect from me?' 
     "'If I catch you from a straightaway back, then I expect you to let me by. And if not, then race me for it.'
    "I think that's important for young guys.  They can either learn the hard way, or they can go find out themselves by reaching out to the veterans and figuring it out. 
    "It saves you a lot of equipment, and it saves you a lot of headache and heartache in the long run. 
     "I think that's why my rookie year went as smoothly as it did -- because I really didn't ruffle any feathers.  After that Martinsville incident, six races into the season, I had no issues with no one. Didn't get in any wrecks. And everyone showed me a lot of respect…like I had been in the sport for a lot of years. Because I earned it, in the seven races in '05 and then that one incident where I was a little aggressive. 
    "I figured out that I needed to back it down and learn my place here. 
    "Hopefully if you're a young guy coming in, and you've got a lot of talent, then you'll be in the sport for many, many years -- then it's better to get that stuff behind you then keep making it worse.
    "Even this year I have talked to Jimmie Johnson and Jeff Gordon and all those guys.  Jeff, just for an instance, seemed, towards the middle part of the season, I was like 'Man, it seems like whenever I get around you, you just race me a little harder.  I wanted to know why.'
    "There's a few little things that he feels I could work on…and he said a lot of it is that he's an old guy driving this car that he can't get hold of and it's just a lot of frustration on his part. 
    "Since that, I have had no issues with him. That was good communication. Preventative maintenance, I guess you could say."
  

  
  But Joey Logano doesn't appear particularly concerned that he's aggravated Biffle (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)