Jeff Green No. 66 Best Buy Haas CNC Racing Chevrolet Coca-Cola 600 / Lowe's Motor Speedway Preview

SPECIAL PAINT DESIGN PROMOTES FUNDRAISING CAMPAIGN FOR MILITARY FAMILIES: While a number of cars in this weekend’s Coca-Cola 600 will carry paint designs to honor and raise funds to assist the troops, the paint design of the No. 66 Best Buy Chevrolet will help raise awareness and funds for those closest to the troops – their families.

Best Buy Racing is assisting the families of military personnel receiving medical care at US military and VA medical centers by promoting Fisher House during the Coca-Cola 600 NEXTEL Cup Series race weekend at Lowe’s Motor Speedway. 

To raise awareness for these “homes away from home,” Jeff Green’s No. 66 Best Buy Haas CNC Racing Chevrolet will carry a special paint design honoring Fisher House.  In addition, Best Buy is helping raise funds for the Fisher House Foundation by allowing customers to donate monies at any Best Buy retail location and online from Memorial weekend through Independence Day.

Members of the military and their families often must travel great distances for specialized medical care. Fisher House Foundation establishes "comfort homes," facilities built on the grounds of major military and VA medical centers, to provide lodging for families of hospitalized military members. 

With 38 locations throughout the US, and six more scheduled to be completed this year, the not-for-profit Fisher House organization has assisted over 110,000 military families since its inception in 1990, saving those families more than $90M in lodging, food and transportation costs.

There is at least one Fisher House at every major military medical center to assist families in need and to ensure that they are provided with the comforts of home in a supportive environment.

In addition to the fundraising efforts, Best Buy is supporting Fisher House through hands-on volunteer opportunities for Best Buy employees at Fisher House locations, and other activities. Several Best Buy vendor partners are making in-kind donations of products needed by current and future Fisher House locations, including laptop computers, television and other electronics. Best Buy employees will volunteer their time to install these products.

Donations to Fisher House can be made at any cash register at all Best Buy retail locations, or any time from the Best Buy website, www.bestbuy.com, beginning on Memorial Day Weekend and continuing through the week of July 4th.

To learn more about the Fisher House Foundation, visit www.fisherhouse.org.

Jeff Green, on Fisher House: “Our friends in the military tell us a great way to show support is by helping the people that mean the most to them – their families. Fisher House provides an incredibly meaningful and valuable service to families by allowing military members to be close to a loved one at a very stressful time – during hospitalization for an illness, disease or injury. We’re proud to help make more people aware of Fisher House, and to help raise funds to benefit the organization.

“Family is everything to me, so it feels good to be a part of something that will help military members be closer to their families. We all want to support the troops. I think we get so focused on that sometimes, we might not remember the military families like we should. Fisher House does something positive for both groups.”

ONE YEAR AGO AT LOWE’S MOTOR SPEEDWAY: In the May Nextel Cup Series event at Lowe’s Motor Speedway, Jeff Green qualified 10th and ran up front for most of the race. Green led 16 laps on his way to a 12th-place finish, the best finish the No. 66 Best Buy Chevrolet team had scored to that point of the year.

CHASSIS: Haas CNC Racing Chassis No. 12: This chassis has been a workhorse for the Haas CNC Racing team this season. Driver Jeff Green has raced this car at California Speedway, Las Vegas Motor Speedway and Texas Motor Speedway in 2007, with finishes of 30th, 25th and 26th, respectively.

Green qualified 15th and finished 12th with this chassis in last Saturday’s NEXTEL Open event.

TEST: The No. 66 Best Buy Haas CNC Racing team spent Tuesday, May 22, at Nashville (Tenn.) Superspeedway,  testing new setup combinations for several upcoming races on the NEXTEL Cup Series schedule.

Q&A WITH CREW CHIEF HAROLD HOLLY:

What did you learn this past weekend in the NEXTEL Open that you can apply to this weekend’s Coke 600? “Well, after all the cautions got out of the way, we got a shot at a long green flag run, and that taught us some pretty valuable things. We got an opportunity to take a big view at which way the race track is going to go in terms of how your car is going to handle. You’re going to have to have a pretty neutral balance (on the car’s setup) in the early going.

“I think you’ll see the track go tight for awhile, and as the air temperature goes down, I think you’ll see it go the other way. Just simply because of the adhesion on the race track. Having the opportunity to watch the All-Star Challenge as opposed to being involved in it, I listened to a lot of different driver comments over the scanner. I listened to (Jeff) Gordon and Jimmie (Johnson) and a few others and heard what they had to say.”

While the No. 66 team didn’t make the All-Star Challenge, did having a Haas car in the Challenge (the No. 70, driven by Johnny Sauter) provide a morale boost for the organization? “Johnny and Bootie (Barker) and all the guys on the No. 70 car did a fantastic job. They got themselves in the right place to be able to capitalize on the situation. Had there been a couple of different restart situations, I think we could have been up front with them.

“Jeff (Green) was clearly not overly happy with his car, but the car had a lot of speed to it and we were able to drive up through the field with it, which is not something we’ve been able to do at a lot of the other mile-and-a-half tracks this year. I think everything we’ve learned so far will pay off.

“To see Johnny run as good as he did once he got the car out front was a real motivator for us to go out there and have a good qualifying run and capitalize on the track position this weekend.”

How did the test session at Lowe’s Motor Speedway earlier this month turn out for the No. 66 team? “The first day was great, but the second day was pretty rough. We had our fast car on the first day, and we spent the second day trying to get our second car to compare with our fast car. We struggled with that most of the day.

“By the time we switched back to the fast car late in the day, we were a step or two behind what the track was doing, and we spent the rest of the time trying to catch back up. I think we learned a lot of good information, and I think we’ll be good when we go back, but that second day wasn’t the best day of testing we’ve ever had.”

Now that this new track surface has a year of wear and weathering, do you see a big difference in how the car responds? “We’re still using the same tire we had from the spring race here last year, but I have to say the tires seem to be hanging on to the grip pretty well.”

GET TO KNOW THE NO. 66 CREW: Best Buy Racing’s website is highlighting the crew members of the No. 66 Haas CNC Racing team. Fans can learn how team members got into racing, their shop and race duties, and even what purchase each crewman made on his last visit to Best Buy, by logging on to www.racing.bestbuy.com.

LOCALS: Several members of the No. 66 Best Buy Racing team were born in North Carolina, including Tire Specialist Jeff Tucker (High Point, NC), Second Truck Driver Gary Buffkin (Whiteville, NC), and pit crew member Phillip Gee (Mt. Pleasant, NC).

JEFF GREEN’S HISTORY AT LOWE’S MOTOR SPEEDWAY: In 13 Nextel Cup Series starts at Lowe’s Motor Speedway (LMS), Jeff Green’s best qualifying effort was a fourth-place starting spot in the May, 1997, race, driving for team owner Gary Bechtel. Green’s best Cup finish at Lowe’s was an 11th-place finish in May, 2005, driving a Petty Enterprises car.

Last year, Green and his No. 66 team finished 12th in the Coca-Cola 600, and 16th in the October 14th NEXTEL Cup Series race at LMS.

In 18 Busch Series starts at LMS, Green has two wins (Green won the May race two years in a row, in 2001 and 2002, but the wins came with different teams. In 2001, Green won while working with Harold Holly and their Greg Pollex-owned team, but his 2002 victory came in a Richard Childress Racing entry), six top-fives and 10 top-10 finishes.

HAAS CNC RACING’S HISTORY AT LOWE’S MOTOR SPEEDWAY: In eight Nextel Cup Series starts at Lowe’s Motor Speedway, the Haas CNC Racing team’s best starting spot was a fifth-place qualifying run by driver Jack Sprague in the May, 2003, race. The team’s best finish came in May, 2006, when driver Jeff Green finished 12th.