JEFF GREEN
NO. 66 BEST BUY HAAS CNC RACING CHEVROLET
TEXAS MOTOR SPEEDWAY PREVIEW

LAST RACE AT TEXAS MOTOR SPEEDWAY: In the April, 2006, Nextel Cup Series race at Texas Motor Speedway, Jeff Green qualified fourth, the best qualifying effort of the season for the No. 66 team. Green’s car did not handle to his liking throughout the race, but he and his Haas CNC Racing crew worked hard to finish the event on the lead lap, in 18th position.

GOALS FOR REMAINDER OF 2006: The No. 66 Best Buy team is making preparations for the 2007 Nextel Cup Series season, but there is a goal the team hopes to achieve in 2006: a top-25 points finish. The Haas team currently sits 28th in Nextel Cup Series owners’ points, 162 points out of the top-25, with three races remaining.

Jeff Green: “It would be a really good way to end the year. It’s mathematically possible, but we’re obviously going to need some strong runs in these last three races, and we need a couple of guys ahead of us to have some problems. I think it would give us momentum going into the off-season, and I believe it would be the best points finish that Haas Racing has ever had if we can pull it off. It’s definitely possible, we just have to be on our game and make it happen.”

Q&A WITH DRIVER JEFF GREEN:

This weekend is scheduled to be Terry Labonte’s final Cup Series race. What are your thoughts on Labonte? “Terry’s a great talent, and he’s a legend. I remember watching him race as I was coming up, and he has always handled himself with a lot of dignity and class. He’s one of those guys that everyone respects, and he earned it without being loud or in your face. I’d hold him up as one of the guys the younger drivers should look to as an example. He’ll be missed in the garage area and on the race track.”

In April, you qualified fourth, your best starting spot of the year. Do you expect a similar starting spot this time around? “It’s hard to say. Things change so fast in this sport that you can’t say for sure from one race to the next how you’re going to perform. We had a great test in Homestead, and I know Harold (Holly) is incorporating some of those notes into our package for this weekend, so I’m optimistic. I won’t know for sure what we’ve got until we get out there.”

Q&A WITH CREW CHIEF HAROLD HOLLY:

Coming off a top-10 result at Martinsville (Speedway), were you disappointed with your 23rd-place finish at Atlanta (Motor Speedway)? “No, not really. You’re not going to come into a situation and get it exactly like you want it in a couple of weeks. My expectations for this past weekend were that we would be a 15th-place car, at best. If the cautions would have fallen a little bit differently, we could have survived Atlanta with a top-15 finish, but it just didn’t work out that way.

“For the remainder of this year, we’re just looking to try and race on the lead lap each week and realistically come home with top-15 finishes. During the off season, we’ll install the package in the cars that I want to use going into 2007, and we’ll work on getting into the top-10 consistently.

“We did have the fabricators make some changes to the ‘aero balance’ of the Texas and Homestead cars based on what we learned at Atlanta. Part of what we’re doing right now is trying to identify where we might need improvement, and the good thing about Atlanta is that it exposed a big area where we need work, so we’ve got that out on the table now and can improve on it.”

What are the peculiarities and characteristics of Texas Motor Speedway, from a crew chief’s point of view? “It’s very similar to California (Speedway) and Kansas (Speedway), and it’s got a surface similar to California. It’s a pretty smooth track, but there’s a bump over in (Turns) 1 and 2, where you go over the tunnel, that you have to adjust for. It’s also got some similarities to Homestead (-Miami Speedway), so we can take some of the notes from the test we had there a couple of weeks ago and hopefully develop a strong setup from there.”

Haas CNC Racing Chassis: Crew Chief Harold Holly is bringing Chassis No. 017 to Texas Motor Speedway. Most recently, Green drove this chassis to a 16th-place finish at Lowe’s Motor Speedway in October.

JEFF GREEN’S HISTORY AT TEXAS MOTOR SPEEDWAY: In six Nextel Cup Series starts at Texas Motor Speedway, Jeff Green has four finishes of 20th or better. His best starting spot came in April of this year, 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 five Nextel Cup Series starts at Texas Motor Speedway, the Haas CNC Racing team scored its best starting spot in April of this year, when Jeff Green qualified fourth. The team’s best finish at Texas came last November, when driver Mike Bliss finished 17th.