Jeff Green No. 66 Best Buy Haas CNC Racing Chevrolet Samsung 500 - Texas Motor Speedway Preview

LAST RACE AT TEXAS MOTOR SPEEDWAY: In the November, 2006, race at Texas Motor Speedway, Jeff Green qualified 27th. By lap 93, Green had dropped back as far as 35th position, but his crew made multiple chassis adjustments to the No. 66 Best Buy entry, and Green worked his way into the top-15 by lap 267 of the 339-lap event. Green went on to finish 13th, his fourth-best finish of the 2006 season (after a seventh at Talladega in October, an eighth at Martinsville in October, and a 12th-place finish at Lowe’s Motor Speedway in May).

Haas CNC Racing Chassis: Crew Chief Harold Holly is bringing Chassis No. 012 to the Samsung 500 at Texas Motor Speedway. This is the same chassis the team qualified 29th and finished 25th with at Las Vegas Motor Speedway in March. The Haas team took this chassis to a wind tunnel in Mooresville, NC, last week.

TITLE SPONSOR – Jeff Green and the members of the No. 66 Best Buy Racing team have even more incentive than usual to do well this weekend at Texas Motor Speedway. One of the team’s associate sponsors, Samsung, is the title sponsor (through the company’s mobile phone division) of Sunday’s race, the Samsung 500. Green’s Best Buy Chevrolet carries decals promoting Samsung HDTV’s.

The Best Buy team’s pit box features two 40” Samsung LCD 1080P HDTV’s, making the area behind the Best Buy Racing pit stall a popular spot for other teams and fans along pit road to watch the TV broadcast between pit stops. Needless to say, it’s one of the few spots on pit road where you can see the broadcast in HD.

Q&A WITH DRIVER JEFF GREEN:

Do you feel any extra pressure this weekend, since one of your associate sponsors, Samsung, is sponsoring Sunday’s race? “Yeah, a little. I definitely want to do well for the sponsors. We ran a special Samsung paint scheme at Vegas, promoting their ‘Four Seasons of Hope’ charity with Best Buy to raise money for the Magic Johnson Foundation. We weren’t able to give Magic and Samsung the kind of finish we wanted to, so maybe we can make it up by getting a good finish on Sunday. I’d love to give Samsung a win in ‘their’ race.”

Your team has had more success with the Car of Tomorrow this season than the “traditional” car. Do you see this weekend’s race as an opportunity to redeem yourselves with the traditional car? “Well, it’s still a race car. That’s the way I look at it, and I think that’s the way Harold (Holly, crew chief) looks at it, so we just have to go out there and do the best job that we can. I don’t think we’re behind on the old car, it just seems like we can’t hit on what we need to hit on. I’m always up for a challenge, and it’s going to be a challenge to get this car to where we need it to be.

“We’ve been testing with the Car of Tomorrow and have had a couple of races with it, so I’m kind of in that mode, but again, a car is a car, and I’m still looking for the same kind of feel out of this car as I am the other style. It just seems like it’s easier to get the feel I’m looking for with the Car of Tomorrow, but hopefully we can get it with this car, too.”

Texas Motor Speedway fixed the bump that some drivers were complaining about. Did it ever bother you? “I don’t think it really bothered anybody when you were running in the bottom groove, but when you tried to run on the outside, it got worse. The higher you went, the worse it got. To allow us to pass each other, I think it needed to be fixed. I think it will make for a better race. Not a different race, but a better race.”

With Texas Motor Speedway being one of the mile and half tracks, of which there are several, does it have its own personality? “Every track has its own ‘face.’ You could build identical tracks, but each one is going to have its own personality. It’s a track that’s shaped after Charlotte (Lowe’s Motor Speedway), but it doesn’t have as much banking and you drive it a little bit different. Every track has a little bit different grip, and you have to drive them all a little bit differently, regardless of how similar they may look.”

What did you do with your off weekend? “I had my Mom over, and we had Mark’s family over (Green’s older brother) and had some Easter dinner. I managed to pick up a cold on Friday and have been trying to shake that, so that’s been fun. We usually go home (to Kentucky) for Easter, so staying in North Carolina was a little different.

“I was the Best Man in a wedding on Saturday. Walter Arce (a photographer who covers NASCAR for Action Sports), got married. I’ve known him for about 15 years, so congratulations to him.”

Qualifying for this race falls on Friday the 13th. Are you a superstitious guy? “I don’t go out of my way to do something superstitious. I’m not the kind of guy that even thinks about stuff like that. I think you make a lot of your luck.

“A lot of drivers don’t like to be around anything that’s green, but a little girl gave me a green marble back early on in the season in 2000, and I kept it in my pocket all year and won the (Busch Series) championship, so I don’t have a problem with anything green. I guess with it being my name, I shouldn’t have a problem with it.

“There is one other thing someone keeps reminding me about. I don’t wear blue racing shoes. I’ll wear them for a photo shoot, but not during a race. The last time I wore blue shoes in a race, I went for a ride at Daytona (Green’s car flipped during the Busch Series race at Daytona International Speedway in February, 2000).”

You used to drive for Dale Earnhardt. He had some superstitions, didn’t he? “I don’t remember too many superstitions from him, other than the penny on the dash, that’s the only thing he let everybody know about. He was too macho to let anyone know that he was superstitious, or that he did anything like that. He wanted everyone to think that he made everything happen, and around his world, I guess he pretty much did.”

He wasn’t a big fan of peanuts or $50 bills, though, right? “Yeah, now that I think about it. That’s not something you ever really thought about with him, though. You just knew not to bring those things around.”

Q&A WITH CREW CHIEF HAROLD HOLLY:  

You haven’t had the finishes you’d like at the 1.5-mile tracks this year. What are you doing differently for Texas? “Instead of bringing something brand new, we chose to cut the majority of the body off (of Chassis No. 012, which raced at Vegas) and make some updates to it and get it to where we think it needs to be, and that’s what we’re bringing to Texas. (The car) showed promise in the wind tunnel. I think it’ll give us more forgiveness with our chassis package with the ‘aero’(dynamics) we have on it now.”

“It takes so much different type stuff to work on the Car of Today. We’ve somewhat got it figured out. All of our mile-and-a-half races wouldn’t have been terrible, if it weren’t for some mistakes. Pit crew mistakes, pit road speeding mistakes. We had things take us out of the top-15 at Vegas (Motor Speedway) and at California (Speedway). Both of those races, we should have ended up in the top-20. Both of those appeared worse than what they really were.

“Atlanta (Motor Speedway) was absolutely horrible. That car, we’re not taking back until we’re able to do some things to it to make it right. It shows what it needs to show in the wind tunnel, but it doesn’t act on the race track like we need it to, so we’re going to make some changes to it.”

SURVIVAL OF THE FASTEST – SPEED Channel had a camera crew following the Haas CNC Racing teams leading up to the race at Martinsville Speedway, and will continue to follow the team through the Texas Motor Speedway race (April 15) for a show called Survival of the Fastest. The show looks at everything that goes on at the race shop leading up to a race, as well as what happens at the track on race weekend.

For the Martinsville/Haas CNC Racing episode, the show goes behind the scenes at the Haas shops, focusing on the team’s seven-post rig, an innovative piece of equipment that allows the team to try different shock and spring packages on its cars in a controlled laboratory environment, and simulates how those setups will perform on the race track.

The show also gives you a look at driver Jeff Green’s shop, where he works on his personal cars and houses his trophies and other racing and hunting memorabilia. There’s also a segment where Jeff and his Crew Chief, Harold Holly, talk about the “good old days” from 1999-2001, when the duo worked together at PPC Racing and dominated the NASCAR Busch Series.

For the Texas episode, SPEED followed Holly, an avid angler who even owns his own fishing team, on a fishing trip to the Cumberland River in Tennessee.

The Martinsville episode will air this week, April 13-15, at various times:

Friday, April 13: 3 p.m. and 10:30 p.m. EDT

Saturday, April 14: 10:30 a.m. EDT

Sunday, April 15: 11 a.m. EDT

The Texas Motor Speedway episode airs next week, Friday-Sunday, April 20-22.

JEFF GREEN’S HISTORY AT TEXAS MOTOR SPEEDWAY: In seven Nextel Cup Series starts at Texas Motor Speedway, Jeff Green has five finishes of 20th or better. His best starting spot came in April, 2006, when he qualified fourth in the No. 66 SanDisk / Best Buy Chevrolet, and his best finish came in the March, 2003, race, when he finished seventh in the No. 30 Richard Childress Racing entry.

In six Busch Series starts at Texas, Green has two pole positions (1997 and 2002), and three top-five finishes (1999, 2000 and 2002).

HAAS CNC RACING’S HISTORY AT TEXAS MOTOR SPEEDWAY: In six Nextel Cup Series starts at Texas Motor Speedway, the Haas CNC Racing team scored its best starting spot in April of last year, when Jeff Green qualified fourth. The team’s best finish at Texas came last November, when Green finished 13th.

TEXAS TUNESMITHS: Texas is a hotbed for songwriters and performers whose styles cross the musical spectrum. Some Texas-based artists whose music is available at Best Buy locations, and on www.BestBuy.com, include:

Waylon Jennings: Born in Littlefield, TX, Jennings is best known as one of the leaders of the “Outlaw Country” movement. His collaboration with Willie Nelson, Tompall Glaser and (Jennings’ wife) Jessi Colter, an album called “Wanted: The Outlaws!”, became country music’s first album to be certified platinum (1,000,000 copies sold). Jennings was also the bass player in Buddy Holly’s (a fellow Texan) band. On the night Holly died in a plane crash, Jennings gave up his seat on the ill-fated flight to singer Richie Valens, who was also killed (along with J.P. Richardson, aka “The Big Bopper”).

Monte Montgomery:  Montgomery, who has lived in the Austin, TX, area for most of his life, is known as a master of the acoustic guitar. In 2004, Guitar Player Magazine named Montgomery as one of the “50 Greatest Guitarists of All Time.”

Pantera: Recognized by MTV as one of the “Top 10 Greatest Heavy Metal Bands of All-Time,” this Arlington, TX- based act was anchored by the Abbott brothers – Vinnie Paul on drums, and Darrell (aka “Dimebag”) on guitar. The group put out five major label studio albums, four of which achieved Platinum or Multi-platinum sales, before disbanding.

Kelly Clarkson: From Fort Worth, TX, Clarkson won the first season of the televised singing competition, American Idol. Since then, Clarkson has scored a number of top 10 singles in the United States, and won several Grammy awards. Clarkson has partnered with NASCAR for the 2007 season, appearing in TV commercials, concerts at various tracks, and at the NEXTEL Cup Champion’s Banquet in December.

Doyle Bramhall II – Born in Austin, TX, this singer/songwriter/guitarist grew up listening to family friends Jimmie and Stevie Ray Vaughan, as well as many other Austin-area musicians. Bramhall’s unique guitar style stems from the fact that he plays left-handed, but on a guitar strung for a right-handed guitarist, then turned upside down. Bramhall has been tapped to tour with music legends like Roger Waters (Pink Floyd) and Eric Clapton, in addition to putting out several solo CD’s.

BEST BUY LOCATIONS: According to the “Store Locator” feature at www.BestBuy.com, there are 22 Best Buy locations in Texas, including store No. 148, located in Grapevine, TX.