While some may scoff, delayed grief is a real thing. Some might even call it a disease, where mental, emotional, or physical limitations of some type prevent a person from accepting or experiencing grief, particularly after the tragic loss of a family member, close friend, or admired public figure like an athlete, actor, etc.

I’ll get back to more about delayed grief momentarily, because it definitely is relevant to what happened Sunday.

This weekend at Darlington Raceway was NASCAR’s annual Throwback Weekend reunion of some of the greats that have ever tried to achieve the problematic quirks of the Track Too Tough to Tame, aka “The Lady In Black.”

The second-oldest active track in NASCAR, with one of the oddest configurations of any racetrack in the world – a 1.366-mile, egg-shaped elongated oval – where seemingly each of its four corners differs from its other three turns, Darlington has been a cruel mistress to many, while also playing favorites with a select few.

Greg Biffle was one of The Lady in Black’s favorites, seemingly always blushing and acting like a giddy schoolgirl whenever Biffle was around. In 16 career NASCAR Cup starts there, he earned two wins, had three top-five and six top-10 finishes. He also had a win, five top-five and six top-10 finishes in the Xfinity Series (now the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series, the undercard to NASCAR’s Cup Series.

Even with the difficult challenge it always presents, Biffle long called Darlington one of his favorite tracks on the NASCAR circuit. He loved the atmosphere, the challenge, and the toughest and hardest impact of any walls in the sport.

“You don’t just race the other cars, you race the track at Darlington,” Biffle once said to me. “That place is so tough, probably the toughest track in NASCAR. And a lot of times, you’d rather lose to another car or driver there than lose to the track. She can be a real b—h of a place.”

Finally coming to terms with the loss of Biffle

You’ve all heard of Classic Rock in music, right? Well, Darlington has become the Classic Rock of race tracks and stock car racing. Not only is it the second-oldest track in the sport (opened 76 years ago in 1950, just under three years younger than the bullring at Martinsville Speedway, which opened in 1947), Darlington is a track that has brought many drivers to their knees, spending countless ways to beat the house, so to speak, yet more often than not you wind up going home with a wrecked or blown up car.

Now, here’s where the delayed grief aspect of Sunday’s Goodyear 400 comes into play.

Sunday was the sixth race of the Cup season. That’s right, we’re still in March, and we’re already one-sixth of the way through the 36-race 2026 racing campaign.

Due in part to its status as the Classic Rock of race tracks, including its extremely popular Throwback Weekend every year, where most teams debut retro-looking cars and firesuits that try to capture and re-create some of the most popular schemes of races and years past, it’s no wonder that Darlington was once again close to being sold out on Sunday. It’s one of the hottest tickets of any race on the schedule, where fans come to relive past history or remember greats from the past, while watching current-day drivers who in the future will someday themselves be remembered as greats from this era of racing.

That’s when it hit me.

Even after races had already been run at Daytona, Atlanta, Circuit of the Americas, Phoenix and Las Vegas, somehow it was still hard to rationalize that Biffle is no longer with us. Maybe it was denial or delayed reaction, but I just haven’t come to believe The Biff, his wife, two kids and three friends were all no longer with us, being killed in a plane crash in Statesville, N.C., on December 18.

But now, after Sunday’s race and just over three months since that tragic crash, I have finally come to accept the inevitable that I’ll no longer see the smiling guy from Vancouver, Washington, ever again. I won’t hear some of his dry wit or smart-aleck jokes. I won’t ever get another chance to talk about off-track things, everything from March Madness (which Biffle loved) to politics, his beloved dogs, and various animal causes he supported, and why he was such a charitable and philanthropic individual.

I remember one time Biffle and I were shooting the chit at Texas Motor Speedway on a bright and sunny Saturday pre-practice morning. I was working on a story about his then crew chief, Doug Richert, who in 1979 was atop the pit box as crew chief for Dale Earnhardt’s first of what would become an eventual seven NASCAR Cup championships. After talking about Richert, Biffle, and I started talking about some of the memories he had already achieved by that point in his career, including championships in both the Xfinity/Busch and Truck series.

Biffle came so close to doing what no other NASCAR driver STILL hasn’t done

Discussion and momentum had started to grow that Biffle had the rare chance of becoming the first driver ever in NASCAR history to win not the sport’s elusive Triple Crown, having won championships in Trucks (2000) and Busch/Xfinity (2002), and aspiring to be the only driver to ever win the Cup crown as well.

Unfortunately, Biffle never earned that third unique title, coming close to capturing the Cup championship in 2005 (second) and 2008 (third). To date, no other driver has won the Triple Crown, either.

Then Biff said one of the most humbling and empathetic self-analysis things that I’ve ever heard in my life.

“Success in NASCAR or racing or whatever is great, but when your life is over, you are not going to be judged on how successful you were as a driver, but rather how successful you were as a human being, how you helped others, or how you lived your life in a good way and as a good person,” Biffle said. “I’ll take that over wins and championships any day.”

I don’t know why those words came back suddenly to me Sunday, given Biffle has been gone for 11 weeks already. But I think it has something to do with Throwback Weekend. Biffle always loved returning to Darlington and taking part in each memorable retro event, either during his years as a driver or, more recently, just as a fan, or more precisely, a NASCAR alumnus.

I don’t mean this in a disparaging fashion, but I admit I’ve tried to forget about Biffle’s death because I still didn’t want to believe he was gone. I wanted to believe it was a bad dream, that it never happened, that he’d come bounding around Darlington Sunday during introductions. In fact, just the other day, I thought about picking up the phone to call him and shoot the chit.

Then my memory snapped back to reality, and I finally knew and realized The Biff was and never will be with us anymore.

It was great to see other NASCAR alums who are still with us and were at Darlington on Sunday, including a number of Hall of Famers, including Richard Petty and Mr. Boogity Boogity Boogity, Darrell Waltrip. Although I’ve been to several throwback events at Darlington in-person, even watching Sunday’s race on TV, it was great to see so many former greats in attendance. It was like a high school reunion, where everybody shook hands, laughed, told jokes and tall tails, while also enjoying great racing of today.

But I take solace in knowing that while Biffle wasn’t there in person any longer, he will always be there in spirit, giving the Lady In Black another embrace.