Food City 500 - Jeff Green Notes

Jeff Green Notes, Quotes: Food City 500
‘It’s the Rose Bowl of racing’

This weekend Jeff Green and the #43 Cheerios/Betty Crocker team head to the .533-mile high-banked Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway for Sunday’s Food City 500. A former pole winner at the demanding track, Green will be making his eighth NASCAR Nextel Cup start at Bristol.

Green, 41, is the only driver to have raced for the sports biggest names. Throughout his career, he has driven for Cup’s most legendary names, such as Junior Johnson, Felix Sabates, Richard Childress, Teresa Earnhardt, and now Richard Petty. Green is in his first full season driving the legendary Petty Enterprises #43 Cheerios/Betty Crocker Dodge. The 2000 NASCAR Busch Grand National champion, he holds the record for the largest point’s margin after winning the championship by 616 points. He is also a two-time NASCAR Nextel Cup pole winner, winning poles at the Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway and the pole for the 2003 Daytona 500.

The thoughts of #43 Cheerios/Betty Crocker Dodge driver Jeff Green heading into Bristol:

“Looking around the Cup garage, I think most of us grew up on short tracks. Going back to Bristol every year reminds everyone of their roots and growing up around short tracks. Maybe guys look at Bristol a little more differently than some of these other tracks. Bristol comes with anticipation, excitement, and a different attitude. It gives us chance to beat and bang a little bit and really get back to our roots of racing. It’s what we grew up around, and it’s one of the few chances to go back to some of the basics of stock car racing.

“It’s a great place for fans and it’s just a different atmosphere for a major stock car race. You think of college football, and that atmosphere of playing in a stadium with thousands of fans surrounding you, that’s what it’s like at Bristol - only bigger and louder. There isn’t a bad seat in the house. We’ve got 150,000 fans just yelling and screaming at us. They are right on top of us, and it makes your hair stand up on the back of your neck when you look around and witness something like that. It’s why you can’t find a ticket to Bristol. Bristol is the Rose Bowl of racing.

“I want to do well at Bristol. It’s one of those tracks that’s pretty close to home (Owensboro, Ky.). It’s not only important to do well for all my family who are close, but for all my fans too. There are so many people who go to Bristol, and I know that my fans are a part of them. I want to give them something back on Sunday. It’s also a good time to spend time with my family. It’s not too far from my home in North Carolina, and to be able to take the afternoon and ride to the track with my family and some friends on our bikes (motorcycles) is pretty cool. It’s a good time to just relax and regroup before going into one of the most intense tracks on the circuit. It sounds strange to say riding a bike hundreds of miles through North Carolina, Virginia and Bristol is relaxing, but compared to what you see on Sunday, the comparison is not even in the same ballpark.

“It’s a fast race with a lot of things happening pretty fast around you. You might think that 500 laps is a pretty long race, but the laps click off pretty quick. It’s not as long as what you might think. You have to make things happen for you. If you’re stuck in the back, you have to move to the front as quickly as possible. It’s not a race where you just want to sit around and wait. You have to pick your spots quickly and make your move. It’s a small track and the leaders can come up pretty fast. You want to be up racing with the front of the field as soon as possible.

“There are a lot of different factors that determine the outcome of the race. Cautions and wrecks are the biggest factor. You don’t want to be caught up in a wreck, and you just have to be aware of what’s going on around you all day. You can never get off that certain frame of mind. You have to be thinking like that all the time. You run the whole race in ‘modified panic mode.’

“The track itself is also pretty tricky. It’s a concrete surface has its good and bad sides. It’s pretty rough. It has gotten better throughout the years, but it’s still a bit bumpy. It’s not too bad to deal with, but the cars don’t have much give in them. It can rattle you around a little bit. The concrete surface does help with the handling of the car. The track doesn’t change too much and it helps keep the car from changing too much. That helps.

“If we can get a good setup on our car early in the race we can have a good day. This Cheerios team has been really working hard this first quarter of the season. We’ve haven’t had the best of luck at times. Hopefully some good luck is around the corner at Bristol. We’re looking for a good finish at Bristol and continue moving forward from there.”