Two Weeks = Two Top-20 Finishes for Green, No. 66 Team

WATKINS GLEN, N.Y. (August 12) – Jeff Green and his No. 66 Haas CNC Racing team posted a 20th-place finish in Sunday’s NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series race at Watkins Glen International road course in New York state..

Coming on the heels of last weekend’s 19th-place run at Pocono Raceway, the result marks the second time this season the No. 66 team has posted back-to-back top-20 finishes. Green and his team also managed consecutive top-20 runs at Phoenix (International Raceway) and Talladega (Superspeedwa) in April, where they finished sixth and 13th, respectively..

Persistent rains forced NASCAR to cancel qualifying for the event on Friday, meaning the field was set based on the NEXTEL Cup owners’ points standings, which gave Green the 32nd starting spot.

Once the green flag was displayed, Green worked his way into the top-25, where he remained for most of the day. Crew chief Harold Holly made several strategy calls to help Green gain track position, calling for a two-tire pit stop on Green’s second trip to pit road, then electing to make a fuel-only pit stop around lap 59, during a green flag run.

Holly and the team hoped a long period of green flag racing would force the leaders to pit later in the event, moving Green up the leaderboard as he remained on track.

The strategy didn’t work out as planned, as four caution flags came out in the last 25 laps of the event, giving the leaders the opportunity to pit without losing too much track position. Still, Green was satisfied with his team’s performance.

“We had a good day overall,” Green said. “We pitted towards the end for fuel only and a lot of the guys didn’t. The way the cautions fell ended up helping those guys and hurt us. If we would have continued to run green flag laps, those guys would have had to pit and we probably could have come away with a top-10 finish. We were better than a 20th-place car.”

The race was won by Tony Stewart (No. 20 Home Depot Chevrolet), who has now won three out of the last four races this season, and has four wins in his last six starts at Watkins Glen. Second through fifth-place included, Denny Hamlin (No. 11 FedEx Chevrolet), Jimmie Johnson (No. 48 Lowe’s Chevrolet), road-race expert Ron Fellows (No. 96 DLP Chevrolet), and Robby Gordon (No. 7 Jim Beam Ford).

The top-five in NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series drivers’ points are Jeff Gordon (No. 24 DuPont Chevrolet), Hamlin, Matt Kenseth(No. 17 DeWalt Ford), Stewart and Carl Edwards (No. 99 Office Depot Ford).

Jeff Green now sits 30th in the drivers’ points standings, within 119 points of the top-25. Team owner Joe Custer continues to hold the 32nd spot in the owners’ points standings after 22 of 36 events.

The NEXTEL Cup Series now makes its second trip of the season to the two-mile Michigan International Speedway in Brooklyn, MI., about an hour west of Ann Arbor.

Earlier this season, Green finished 36th at Michigan after being involved in an accident with driver Ryan Newman.

The race will air live on ESPN and MRN Radio affiliates on Sunday, August 19, beginning at 1 p.m. EDT.