JEFF GREEN
NO. 66 BEST BUY HAAS CNC RACING CHEVROLET
MICHIGAN PREVIEW

TEST SESSION: The Haas CNC Racing team will spend Tuesday, August 15, testing at Kentucky Speedway in preparation for this weekend’s 400-mile race at Michigan International Speedway.

Q&A WITH DRIVER JEFF GREEN:
As a driver, it had to feel good to come out of a road course race with a top-15 finish, right? “Yeah. You work so hard every week, it’s nice to finally see the fruits of your labors a little bit. You get so frustrated when you’re not running well. It’s tough. It’s not fun at all when you’re struggling. It’s kind of funny that our best finishes recently have come at road courses, because those are definitely not where I usually have the most success. I’ll take it, though.”

Heading back to Michigan and knowing that you struggled there last time, do you still look forward to going back? “Yeah, I do. You know, that’s one great thing about racing is that every week is another chance to do well. You know, you’ve got your notes from the last race, so you hope you know what not to do this time around. I think going to test at Kentucky is going to be a big help. It’s very hard as a single-car team to come to tracks like Michigan and only have a couple of hours of practice to get things right ,when other teams have two, three and four sets of notes to look at.

“It’s the cards we’ve been dealt, so we have to play them, but being able to go spend a day at a track and know that the clock is not ticking and there’s not as much pressure to get dialed in in just a couple of hours is really helpful. We’ll do our thing and take our time and hopefully we can come out of there with some good information that will help us this weekend and beyond.”

Q&A WITH CREW CHIEF “BOOTIE” BARKER:
What are you trying to accomplish at your test at Kentucky Speedway on Tuesday, August 15? “We’ve got a couple of goals for the test. First, we’re taking our Car of Tomorrow and we’ll be shaking that down in preparation for the test session we’ve got coming up at Michigan after the Cup race on Monday. We’re trying a geometry package that was suggested to us by one of the Hendrick engineers, and we just want to get a little bit of a head start for that test.

“Secondly, we’ve got some different geometry packages and some different front and rear shock packages and spring packages that I want to try out before we head to Michigan this weekend. Hopefully, the info we gain can be used at some of the other tracks we have coming up as well. We’ll see what we’ve got when we come out of there Tuesday night. We definitely need to improve over what we had at Michigan back in June, so we hope we’ve got some things that will help us. We’ll see how it goes.”

You finished 15th at Watkins Glen, which was your best finish since Infineon Raceway. Was that the positive momentum you needed to get things going in the right direction? “It was a start, for sure. Anytime you can finish in the top-15, you have to see that as a positive. More than anything, I’m happy for the guys, because they haven’t had a lot to smile about these past few races. It’s not like they haven’t been working as hard as anyone in the garage, so it’s good to see them get rewarded finally.

“We’ve still got a long way to go, though. That’s why we’re doing the additional testing and really examining everything to see if we can get a handle on where we’ve been lacking.”

JEFF GREEN’S HISTORY AT MICHIGAN INTERNATIONAL RACEWAY: In 14 NEXTEL Cup Series starts at Michigan International Speedway, Jeff Green’s best qualifying effort was a 13th-place starting spot, which he accomplished twice, in August, 1997, and June, 2003. His best finish was a ninth-place run, which came in August, 2002.

In his most recent start at Michigan, Green started 27th and finished 33rd in the No. 66 Best Buy Chevrolet in June. Green was involved in two incidents during that race. In the first, Green and Tony Stewart made contact, damaging Stewart’s machine.

In the second incident, two cars wrecked in front of the No. 66, and Green was unable to avoid another car that was also slowing down to avoid the accident. The No. 66 was damaged in the incident, requiring several trips to pit road for repairs.

Before Green could regain lost positions, rain forced NASCAR to call an early end to the race.

In seven NASCAR Busch Series starts at Michigan, Green has two top-10 starting spots, and a third-place finish in the August, 2002, race.

HAAS CNC RACING’S HISTORY AT MICHIGAN INTERNATIONAL RACEWAY: In seven NEXTEL Cup Series starts at Michigan, the Haas CNC Racing team has two sixth-place starting spots (August, 2003, and August, 2005, with drivers Jason Leffler and Mike Bliss, respectively). The team’s best finish was a 19th-place run by driver Jack Sprague in June, 2003.

THIS WEEK’S FEATURED CREWMAN: Geoffrey McNally- Mechanic and “Eighth Man” on Pit Stops –
Best Buy Racing’s website is highlighting the crew members of the No. 66 Haas CNC Racing team. Each week, a different crew member is featured with an expanded bio. Read the latest by logging on to either www.racing.bestbuy.com or http://racing.bestbuy.com.