Jeff Green Bristol Preview

NO. 66 BEST BUY CHEVROLET IMPALA SS

BRISTOL MOTOR SPEEDWAY PREVIEW 

CHASSIS – Chassis No. 409 – This is the same car the No. 66 team tested with at Bristol Motor Speedway earlier this month.

Q&A WITH DRIVER JEFF GREEN

IS THERE REALLY THAT BIG OF A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE CAR YOU’VE USED IN THE PAST AND THE “CAR OF TOMORROW,” OR IS IT JUST ANOTHER RACE CAR? “It’s just another race car. There are some different things, rule-wise and spring-wise, about it that causes you to have to drive it differently. To me, it’s more ‘tune-able’ (than the cars the team uses elsewhere). We can tune it better for me and get what I want out of it. I like it. I wish we could run it every week. So far, every time I’ve sat in one, we’ve been pretty good. We’ve been able to tune it like I want it and drive it fast.

“I think we’re right together with everyone, or maybe even a little ahead of some other people with the Car of Tomorrow. It’s exciting for me to maybe have a leg up on some of the competition. That’s how you are competitive and maybe win one of these races is to have a leg up. I think we have that over some other teams, and we have to thank Hendrick (Motorsports) for that. They’ve been great about sharing their information and helping us along with our cars. They’re just a remarkable resource to pull from.”

HOW DOES BRISTOL RANK ON YOUR LIST OF FAVORITE TRACKS? “It’s definitely in the top-five, and is probably more like the top-three. I love the short tracks and the tracks that have a lot of history, so Bristol fits the bill twice in that respect. One of my last NASCAR wins came at Bristol back in 2002, and I consider it a huge accomplishment to have visited Victory Lane here. It’s one of those tracks you definitely want to be able to mark off your list. I put it right up there with winning at Darlington (Raceway), Richmond (International Raceway), and the old Nashville Speedway.”

YOU’RE SITTING 35TH IN POINTS HEADING INTO BRISTOL. DOES THAT AFFECT HOW YOU PREPARE FOR THIS RACE? “No, not at all. It’s not like we’re not already working as hard as we can. Everybody on this team is doing everything they can to make us better. We’ve just really struggled, a lot more than expected, on the mile-and-a-half tracks so far. We had a great car at Daytona and got up into the top-five, but some bad pit stops dropped us back and we got caught up in Jimmie’s (Johnson) wreck. We definitely had a top-10 car at Daytona. All you can do is keep your head up and keep digging.

“We know we need a good day at Bristol, and we feel like we’ve got a car capable of giving us a good finish. The obvious problem with Bristol is that you just never know what’s going to happen. You can be leading and get wrecked just as easily as you can when you’re running in 30th. I feel like we’ve got two great opportunities in the next couple of weeks at the short tracks to get ourselves up in the points and give ourselves a little breathing room before we head to Texas (Motor Speedway). Hopefully, we can get a handle on our mile-and-a-half program there and have a decent day.

“There’s no doubt that everyone on this team knows exactly where we are in the points standings. We’ve all got that shadow hanging over our heads, and we all know what’s at stake. We’ll do whatever it takes and whatever we can to get a decent finish at Bristol and hopefully move us up a few spots in the points.”

Q&A WITH CREW CHIEF HAROLD HOLLY:

YOU HAD A GOOD TEST AT BRISTOL. DID YOU FIND A BIG DIFFERENCE IN TERMS OF SETUP BETWEEN THE CAR OF TOMORROW AND YOUR USUAL CARS? “(The Car of Tomorrow is) quite a different animal to work on as far as the front end and the front geometry goes. We had to go back about six years and pull our notes from back then. Once we backed ourselves up into somewhat of the old school-type working scenarios, the car came around pretty quick. As far as the car itself goes, once we figured out how to keep the car off the racetrack, it wasn’t much different from working on the ‘car of today.’ 

“From a handling standpoint and a balance standpoint, we did some really long runs, we didn’t do any qualifying runs. We stayed right around top-10 speeds most of the time. We did a 50-lap long race run, and were extremely happy with that. We matched up with the (No.) 48 and some of the better cars there. Lap for lap, we were as good as any car there, and we were pretty happy with that.”

YOU’RE ON THE BUBBLE IN TERMS OF BEING IN THE TOP-35 IN POINTS HEADING INTO BRISTOL. DO YOU APPROACH THE RACE ANY DIFFERENTLY AS A RESULT OF THAT? “No, not really. You’ve got to obviously go in to the race being ‘cautiously aggressive,’ but you can’t go in there being so cautious that you hurt yourself in that way.

“We shouldn’t be in this position if we’d have gotten everything we needed, points-wise, out of Daytona, and obviously our mile-and-a-half program is not where it needs to be. We’re working on that now. We don’t think it’s an ‘aero’ problem. It’s more to do with the tire and the setup stuff that we have now versus what we tested with at (Las) Vegas (Motor Speedway). Both cars were really fast at Vegas, then they changed the tire on us. Everything we built, we’ve kind of struggled with since then, so we’re working very hard to get caught up.

“As far as this weekend goes, we’re going there with a brand new car, obviously. We feel really good about our package. If we’ve got a 15th-place car, we’re not going to try and make a fifth-place car out of it, but we are going to try and make a 12th-place car out of it.”

A LOT OF TEAMS ARE SAYING THAT TECHNICAL INSPECTION AT BRISTOL COULD BE PROBLEMATIC, GIVEN THE VERY TIGHT TOLERANCES NASCAR IS ALLOWING. WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON THAT? “I don’t think it’s going to be nearly as bad as some people think. I think the biggest hassle is going to be that with the cars being wider, it’s going to make it that much tighter when you’re working on your car on pit road during practice.

“We took both cars through the tech line, the primary we’re using at Bristol and the backup, which is our Martinsville car, and the stuff we had to fix was pretty minute. The way we showed up at the test, we could have raced at Bristol. The stuff we had wrong, we came back to the shop and fixed, so we don’t expect any problems.

“Now, the teams who didn’t take their cars through the tech line and a team that doesn’t totally understand what’s going on with this new package, (NASCAR) could very well tell you to put your car back on the truck and head home. It’s going to be interesting, you can bet on that.”

SUCCESSFUL BRISTOL TEST: Jeff Green and the No. 66 Best Buy Chevrolet team posted the 10th-fastest time overall in the first day of testing at Bristol Motor Speedway in late February.  Green’s fast lap of 15.804 seconds, at an average speed of 121.412 miles per hour, was the second fastest lap posted in the “PM” portion of the first session (the list of unofficial speeds were broken out into three sessions: AM, PM, and evening).

Denny Hamlin posted three of the 10 fastest laps recorded. Greg Biffle scored two of the top 10 times, with Jimmie Johnson, Ward Burton, Kasey Kahne and Matt Kenseth and Green rounding out the top 10.

SHAKEDOWN: Instead of heading back to North Carolina after Sunday’s race in Atlanta, Ga., the Best Buy team instead took Interstate 75 south to the South Georgia Motorsports Park, near Valdosta, Ga. On Monday, the team spent several hours “shaking down” Chassis No. 406, one of the team’s new Car of Tomorrow chassis. The car will be used as a backup at Bristol Motor Speedway this weekend, and is scheduled to be the No. 66 team’s primary car next weekend at Martinsville (Va.) Speedway.

R&R: Following the test at South Georgia Motorsports Park on Monday, Jeff Green headed to Alabama to go Turkey hunting with friends on Tuesday and Wednesday, March 20-21.

JEFF GREEN’S HISTORY AT BRISTOL MOTOR SPEEDWAY: In 13 Cup series starts at Bristol, Jeff Green has one pole, which he scored in the August, 2001, race while driving for Richard Childress Racing. Green’s best finish is a 15th-place result, which came in March, 2006, in the No. 66 Best Buy Chevrolet.

HAAS CNC RACING’S HISTORY AT BRISTOL MOTOR SPEEDWAY: In eight Nextel Cup Series starts at Bristol Motor Speedway, Haas CNC Racing’s best starting spot is a 16th-place qualifying effort, which both Ward Burton and Jeff Green accomplished (in August, 2004, and August, 2006, respectively). The team’s best finish came in August, 2005, with driver Mike Bliss, who finished seventh.