Best Buy Racing Scores Second Top-10 of 2007 in COT 

AVONDALE, AZ (April 22) – For Jeff Green and the crew of the No. 66 Best Buy Racing Chevrolet Impala SS, “tomorrow” can’t come soon enough.

For the second time in three races in which teams have used the new Car of Tomorrow (COT), Green and his Haas CNC Racing crew scored a sixth-place finish, this time in the 500-kilometer NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series race at Phoenix International Raceway.

Green’s team also posted a sixth-place run in the debut of the COT at Bristol Motor Speedway last month.

“It’s just what the team needed,” Green said. “We had a really good car tonight. We just got a little too tight at the end and couldn’t get into the top-five. Like I’ve been saying, we just seem to have a better handle on the COT than the other car.

“A lot of the credit for that goes to Hendrick Motorsports. They’re a tremendous resource, and they’ve been a tremendous help to this team. That’s not to take anything away from Harold (Holly, crew chief of the No. 66 Chevrolet) and the crew. They gave me some great stops tonight, and Harold made some smart changes to the car.

“I don’t know what it’s going to take to get over the hump and get a top-five finish, but if we can get a top-10 every time we run this COT, I’ll be happy.”

After scoring a 14th-place starting spot in qualifying on Thursday afternoon, the No. 66 team backed up their strong showing with two solid practice sessions on Friday.

When the race got underway around 5:30 PDT on Saturday afternoon, Green reported his car had a loose handling condition. This condition was actually by design. As the sun went down and the air and track temperatures decreased, Holly knew the car’s handling was likely to become much more “tight,” so he intentionally set the car up to be loose in the early going.

In spite of the loose condition, Green’s lap times were comparable to drivers running in the top-five, and Holly only made slight chassis adjustments on early pit stops.

By the midway point of the event, Green was being shown in the 14th position, and remarked to Holly that the No. 66 was now difficult to turn in the center of the turns, just as Holly had predicted.

Holly called for more adjustments to loosen the car’s handling, and Green worked his way up to 12th by lap 218.

Over the next 10-plus laps, Green battled for position with Carl Edwards before finally bypassing Edwards’ No. 99 machine to again take over 12th position. Some 25 laps later, Green had reeled in the No. 5 car of Kyle Busch to move up to 11th.

On lap 278, a few of the frontrunners began to make green flag pit stops, pushing Green up into the top-five. Just three laps before Green was scheduled to come to pit road, the caution flag came out for an incident involving Edwards and the No. 22 of Dave Blaney. Those teams that had already pitted were either caught a lap down, or found themselves on the tail end of the lead lap.

For Green and his team, the lucky break allowed them to come to pit road in fifth position to put on four fresh tires and take on a splash of fuel for the dash to the finish of the 312-lap event. Kyle Busch was able to beat Green off pit road to drop the No. 66 back to sixth-place for the lap 294 restart.

While Green initially lost one more position following the restart, by lap 305, Green powered back by Busch to take the sixth-position before the checkered flag was displayed.

The finish marks both Green’s and Haas CNC Racing’s best-ever showing at Phoenix International Raceway, and equals the best finish the Haas team has had in its history in the NEXTEL Cup Series.

The strong showing also allows Green and team owner Gene Haas to move up three positions to 25th in the NEXTEL Cup drivers’ and owners’ points standings, respectively.

The Best Buy team hopes to take the momentum generated from this top-10 showing and use it next weekend at the second restrictor-plate race of the season at Talladega Superspeedway in Alabama.

Green managed two top-15 finishes at the 2.66-mile superspeedway last season, scoring a 14th-place finish in the April Talladega event, followed by an eighth-place run in the October race.

The 499-mile race will air live from Talladega Superspeedway next Sunday, April 29, beginning at 1:30 p.m. EDT on FOX and MRN Radio affiliates.

Before the team heads to Alabama, it will make a detour to Kentucky Speedway for two days of testing on Tuesday and Wednesday, April 24-25. The Haas crew hopes to improve on its 1.5-mile downforce race program using data gathered at the test session.