Should the Biff have gotten in?
The NASCAR Hall of Fame announced their 2027 class yesterday, with Kevin Harvick and Jeff Burton being selected from the Modern Era and Larry Phillips being selected from the Pioneer Era.
Harvick seemed like an inevitable choice for the honor in his first year being on the ballot. He got his start in the NASCAR Cup Series back in 2001 when he was unexpectedly called up to replace Dale Earnhardt following his tragic death in the Daytona 500, and would go on to win his first race in just his third Cup Series start.
He went on to win 60 races over his 24 year Cup Series career, as well as the 2014 championship and two championships in what is now known as the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series.
Since retiring in 2023, Harvick has served as a broadcaster for NASCAR on FOX, and also hosts his own weekly podcast on the sport.
While Harvick was a natural choice for the Hall of Fame, and ended up appearing on 46 out of the 50 ballots, the selection of Jeff Burton has some people scratching their heads.
Burton, who currently serves as a commentator for NASCAR on NBC, competed in the NASCAR Cup Series full time from 1994 to 2013, racing against some of the legends of the sport like Dale Earnhardt and Jeff Gordon. But over his 20 year career, Burton won only 20 races and had a best finish of 3rd in the final-season points standings.
His contributions to the sport, though, go far beyond the track. Burton has served as a leader in the garage and a fierce advocate and spokesperson for his fellow drivers, especially when it comes to safety. He was instrumental in developing the seat that drivers currently use, taking it upon himself following a string of fatal accidents in the early 2000s (including Earnhardt’s).
The vote for the second Modern Era spot in the Hall of Fame was pretty sharply divided, with second-place Burton receiving votes on only 16 of 50 ballots, with Neil Bonnett finishing third and barely missing out.
NASCAR fans, however, aren’t happy about another driver being left out of the Hall of Fame: The late, great Greg Biffle.
Biffle, of course, tragically passed away last December in a plane crash in North Carolina, and since then the sport and drivers have continued to honor him for his contributions not only to the sport but to his community. Biffle has been on the Hall of Fame ballot since 2024, but still has yet to get the votes necessary to be inducted.
The Vancouver, Washington native got his start racing on short tracks around the Pacific Northwest, and began his NASCAR career driving full-time in the Truck Series in 1998. The following year, he won a staggering nine races while finishing second in the final points standings. He would go on to win the Truck Series championship in 2000 before moving up to the then-Busch Series (now O’Reilly Auto Parts Series) in 2001.
He won his first and only Busch Series title in 2002 while also making a limited number of Cup Series starts for various teams, including Roush Racing and Petty Enterprises. And the following year, Biffle finally got his shot in the big leagues when it was announced that he would be joining Roush full time as the driver of their #16 car.
He remained with Roush for his entire Cup Series career, winning 19 races and finishing as high as second in the points standings during the 2005 season. Biffle retired from full-time racing after the 2016 season, but returned to the Cup Series in 2022 to make a handful of starts for the NY Racing Team, his first races in the Cup Series in six years. Over his nearly two-decade career, Biffle won 56 races across the sport’s top three series.
Obviously his stats on the track are fairly similar to Burton’s, but given his recent death NASCAR fans weren’t happy that he was left out of the Hall of Fame:
One voter, though, said that it simply comes down to the math.
According to Jeff Gluck, NASCAR reporter for The Athletic, there are too many deserving nominees with similar resumés on the ballot to choose from for the two spots that are selected each year.
“The problem is there’s a bit of a logjam right now with drivers like Burton, Bonnett and Biffle, all of whom won a relatively similar amount of Cup races, in addition to deserving crew chiefs and engine builders. So it really comes down to the extras on the resume, and Burton had those with his off-track contributions.”
And Burton, who was Biffle’s teammate at Roush Racing during their driving careers, said that Biffle absolutely deserves to be in the Hall of Fame at some point:
“He definitely deserves to be in the Hall of Fame at some point. When that is, that’s not for me to decide.”
I feel confident that Biffle will be inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame at some point, maybe even next year given all the uproar over his exclusion this time around.
But for many fans, it will ultimately come at least a year too late.
