Auto Club 500 - Jeff Green Notes

Jeff Green Notes, Quotes: Auto Club 500
‘California - Fast, Flat, and Wide’

Prepared for the second West Coast race of the season, this weekend Jeff Green and the #43 Cheerios/Betty Crocker Dodge team head into the two-mile California Speedway, located in the city of Fontana, for Sunday’s Auto Club 500. Green will be making his fifth NASCAR Nextel Cup start on the track where he has enjoyed past success. His seventh-place finish there in 1997 was his first top 10 in Cup racing.

Green, 41, is the only driver to have raced for the sport’s biggest names. Throughout his career, he has driven for Cup’s most legendary names, such as Junior Johnson, Felix Sabates, Richard Childress, Dale 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 points 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 California:

“California is where I was able to grab my first-ever top 10, so maybe it means more to me than some other tracks. Nextel Cup racing is very competitive and anytime you get a top-10 it’s pretty rewarding. I don’t think you ever forget the tracks where you accomplish certain goals in your career. You always remember your first top-10, top-five and things like that. California is on my list of memorable tracks for what I accomplished there. Hopefully I’ll be able to remember California as my first Cup win after this weekend. It’s going to be tough, but I am excited to get there.

“It’s a track that I really like and maybe I’ve got a leg-up on some of the other guys already because I like it so much. It’s the mental part of racing. If you like a track, you tend to do a little bit better. If you don’t like a track, maybe you don’t do as well. Hopefully these guys aren’t big fans of California. I think that is going to be tough. It’s pretty hard to find guys that don’t like that track. There isn’t too much not to like about it.

“The track is really built to produce good racing for stock cars. It’s a wide track and it has a lot of grooves to it. I think that might be the track’s best trademark. It just has such a big groove - three to four lanes deep. You can be just about anywhere on the track and still have plenty of room to race. It’s pretty relaxing to come to after such close-quarter racing at Martinsville then Talladega.

“It’s a pretty flat track too. I enjoy racing flat tracks, and California really fits my style of racing. The track is fast, flat, and so wide that the driver really has a lot to do with the team’s performance. A good car really goes a long way too. You need to be able to drive the car through the long sweeping turns, so handling really matters. The long backstretch demands a lot of horsepower. A good car makes a big difference here.

“If you don’t have a good car, it’s right back in the driver’s hands. You have to figure out a way to wheel the car around the track and get it to go. That might be one of my strong suits. I am pretty good at finding the right lines to run where the car is going to race the best. California is so wide that it allows you to do that. You can go out and ‘search’ the track to find your fastest groove. It’s a cat-and-mouse game with the track and car throughout the race. It’s a whole lot easier when your car is handling well.

“The ‘softer’ tire, at first, made everyone believe that we were going to see some pretty drastic changes in the racing at the bigger tracks like California. Surprisingly, that hasn’t happened. The speeds might be faster for a few laps, but it’s about the same as last season. I still don’t think you want to gamble too much on tires, but I don’t think it has affected the racing as much as I thought it might.

“We’re all ready to get back out west. California is a nice track with great fans to race in front of. I want to give them a good showing with this #43 Cheerios/Betty Crocker Dodge on Sunday.”