NASCAR great who died in plane crash had previous, minor plane crash in Kentucky

Valarie Honeycutt Spears, Lexington Herald-Leader on Dec 18, 2025

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LEXINGTON, Ky. — Retired NASCAR driver Greg Biffle, who died Thursday in a North Carolina plane crash along with his wife and two children, was also involved in a minor 2011 plane crash in Lexington.

Biffle and two pilots were not injured when, in March 2011, a landing-gear malfunction caused his plane to partially collapse while landing at Blue Grass Airport in Lexington, according to a 2011 news release.

In a phone interview with Nascar Now on ESPN2 shortly after the crash, Biffle said he looked out the window and noticed the left wing rising into the air, and the right wing dragging the runway and sending up sparks.

Biffle called his pilots “heroes” for preventing the plane’s wing from leaving the runway and dragging in the grass, which could have caused the plane to flip over. “My pilots did a remarkable job,” he said.

An airport spokeswoman said at the time the private plane’s right landing gear collapsed as it was taxiing. The airport did not classify the incident as a crash, but as a “mechanical failure.”

The plane was landing on the airport’s main commercial runway. The runway was closed for about two hours while crews towed the plane and cleaned up debris, she said. Battalion Chief Marshall Griggs, of the Lexington fire department, said the department used airbags to prop up a wing of the plane, allowing workers to lower the landing gear so it could be towed off the runway.

Biffle was in Lexington on business when the minor crash occurred, a NASCAR spokeswoman said at the time.

In Thursday morning’s crash, People.com reported that Biffle, his wife Cristina Grossu Biffle and their two children were among at least six people killed in a plane crash in North Carolina.

People.com reported that Biffle, nicknamed “The Biff,” “won multiple championships during his racing career including in the Truck Series in 2000 and the Xfinity Series in 2002. The Vancouver, Wash., native was named one of NASCAR’s 75 Greatest Drivers in 2023.

In 2024, Biffle received the 2024 NMPA Myers Brothers Award for humanitarian aid, People.com reported.