LAST RACE AT PHOENIX: In November, 2006, Jeff Green and the No. 66 Best Buy Chevrolet team qualified 25th at Phoenix International Raceway. Two accidents within a span of 30 laps left Green and his crew with a heavily damaged race car, and a 37th-place finish.
After running in the top-20 for most of the race, the Best Buy car first suffered damage when Jamie McMurray wrecked in front of Green on lap 273. Green’s crew made quick repairs to the No. 66 machine and kept Green on the lead lap, but the time spent on pit road dropped Green back to 26th position for the lap 282 restart.
Green was working his way back up through the field when he was hit by driver Tony Raines, sending the No. 66 Chevrolet slamming into the outside retaining wall on lap 299 of the 312-lap event. The damage was too severe to be repaired in the short time remaining, and Green and his team called it a day.
Q&A WITH DRIVER JEFF GREEN:
You’re back to the COT this week. Are you happy to get back to this car? “Absolutely. We just don’t seem to have the handle on the other car like we do on the COT, so this swap to the new car can’t come soon enough for me. You want to feel like you can be competitive every week, and I just feel more comfortable with the COT right now. Harold (Holly, crew chief) and the guys are really working hard to get us where we need to be with the other car, but we definitely seem to be ahead of some other teams in terms of the learning curve on the COT. The thanks for that really goes to Hendrick Motorsports and all the research and effort they’ve been putting into that side of things. ”
As a driver, why do you think you like the COT more than some of the other drivers? “Well, I guess I’m one of the older guys out here now, and the COT has a feel kind of like the cars did five or six years ago, before we got into all this ‘coil binding’ stuff. A lot of the younger guys haven’t been in the series that long, and have never driven the cars with the older feel. To me, the COT puts it more back in the driver’s hands, which I’m all about. ”
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