Conversation: Jeff Green

CONCORD, N.C. - Jeff Green has already had a storied career in NASCAR, driving for Dale Earnhardt Inc., Richard Childress Racing and now Petty Enterprises.

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He won the 2000 Busch Series title by the widest margin in series history. He won the Bud Pole for the 2003 Daytona 500.

He has yet to crack Victory Lane in NASCAR's top series, but did you know this is only his third full season? And he's only had one full season with the same car owner?

Hard to have any consistency like that, but Green hopes he can stick with the No. 43 Dodge team for several years, building a winner along the way.

Green recently spoke with NASCAR.COM's Lee Montgomery about driving for the Pettys, one of NASCAR's legendary teams, about the charity foundation he established with his brother Mark, and about which of the three Green brothers is the best driver.

First off, who is the brains behind the Green Foundation?

Green: That would have to be wives. Mark's wife, Cathy, and my wife, Michelle, they do the paperwork, they do the hard part, you might say.

	Green has two straight top-15 starts. Credit: Autostock

Mark and myself, we just try to get the auction stuff and try to put together some fun stuff to do - well, I guess Michelle and Cathy do that. We just try to pull it off.

The credit goes to those two girls. Not that Mark and myself don't put a lot of attention to it, but time is our concern. We're lucky to have Michelle and Cathy.

Cathy does a lot of it, and Michelle is right beside her, for the most part, but Cathy probably does more than anything.

How did that get started? What was the idea behind it?

Green: Michael Waltrip started a golf tournament in Owensboro, and he ran it for three or four years. Since he moved all his family to North Carolina, he was going to not do that golf tournament.

So Mark and myself took it over.

To be a charity, to be able to have people write checks to a charity, we had to start a foundation, and that's where the Green Foundation came from. It's multiplied into different things to do.

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We did a function last year in Charlotte, and we want to do that again. Neal McCoy came in and did a concert for us, and we had some auction stuff.

Again, time is not on our side, but we want to do more and more. And we're able to do more and more now that we have that foundation set up where we can legally do it and not get anybody in trouble.

People checks to charity, more than they would to myself or to a bank account where you can put that in. Legally, we're all set up to do that. Hopefully, that tends to let more people spend more money and we're able to give more money away because of that.

But if somebody wanted to write Jeff Green a check, you'd take it.

Green: (Laughing). Well, we're not going to. I don't know. Maybe not.

I noticed something - back to racing a little bit - a little interesting about you in the record book. This is only your third full season of Cup racing. I was a little bit amazed by that.

Green: Yeah. In '97, I got a partial year. I was running the Busch Series and had a chance to win a championship there, and my owner pulled me out of that and put me in his Cup car.

That was a partial season. In '98, that team went away halfway through the season. In '99, I went back to the Busch Series and ran there and won the championship there in 2000 and won there in 2001 in another season in the Busch Series.

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(The year) 2002 was really my first full season with the AOL car at RCR. Then last year kind of says it all. I didn't really get a full season in there.

I've got a lot of races under my belt, but putting seasons together where you put a championship (together), hopefully, and build on a championship - you can't build it overnight.

It's kind of been the downfall of my Cup career, just getting people to stick with me and give me the opportunity to build a team around me. Hopefully, that's what we can do at Petty Enterprises.

In a way, are you still learning these Cup cars and learning these tracks and stuff? Or do you feel like you have enough experience that you can get in and go?

Green: You learn every day. If you quit learning, I think you need to find something else to do. I think I've got enough experience to get the job done. I think I know what I want, feel-wise, to be able to put that car in Victory Lane and get to the end of the day.

That's what I've learned more than anything over the years is taking care of my equipment and making sure I'm there on the last lap.

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Sometimes, that might not get as good a finish as if you take a chance here and there. But when you bring a car home, those guys are able to build on it and make it better for next week instead of just getting it back together.

I've seen a lot of guys wreck cars each week. That puts their team behind. That's my main focus when the green flag drops, is make sure I bring the thing home and get the best finish out of it, too - try to put that best day together.

You had one of the dominant seasons in the Busch Series, ever - the widest margin of victory in that championship year.

And yet, there are some guys who have had a lot of success in the Busch Series but haven't been able to transfer it over to Cup. Is that just not getting in the right ride, the right situation?

Or is there something else to the difference between the two cars?

Green: I don't think there's that much difference. The biggest difference is the race length and the guys you're racing against.

	Richard Petty Credit: Autostock

Being able to win and not being able to win is the people surrounding you, the guys building the racecars, everything. You've got to have a whole team, it's got to be a whole team effort to make a quality race team.

That was the biggest thing. I knew that, but it reminded me of it when I got with Harold Holly and those guys in the Busch Series. We were able to go out and win races and be dominant doing it. I didn't learn how to drive over the winter. The only difference is the people surrounding you.

That's what it is today. In the Cup series, they've got so many talented people, and they're far and few between. When a team like Jeff Gordon's team or Matt Kenseth's team get together and stay together a while, they can build on that.

That's what we're really focusing on. Hopefully, we can stay together. I've got a great crew chief. Gary Putman, he's really a smart and intelligent guy.

A young guy, and he thinks about things before he reacts, I think we can build a race team around all of us up there at Level Cross if they'll stick with us.

We're paying the price right now, having some problems.

We're running good, but we're not finishing races where we need to be finishing, maybe because we're getting in somebody else's mess or blowing up, things like that. If we can build on that, in a year or two, we'll be a team that can go out and be consistent in the top 10, top five. We you can do that, you can win races.

Yeah, we could win a race right now. But everything has to go our way, every bit of it. But the main thing is, my focus is - just like the Busch Series - in 2000 I had 26 top-fives out of 32 races.

That's what consistency's all about. That's what I want to be able to do in the Cup series.

One of the things Kyle (Petty) talked about, an advantage when they hired you, was your experience with some of these other teams, DEI, RCR.

What are some areas specifically that when you went to the Pettys that you noticed that you wanted changed or maybe they weren't doing quite right or that DEI and RCR did better?

Green: I don't know if they did anything better, the other two teams. They might have a bigger shop. But that doesn't win you races. It's still all about people.

The biggest thing at Petty Enterprises is we're behind on our bodies, and I think we're still a little bit behind on our motors. These days, it's not about chassis anymore.

	Green (left) with Dale Earnhardt Jr. Credit: Kevin Wakefield

We're running mile-and-a-half tracks or bigger 75 percent of the time, so it's all about downforce and getting the bodies on right where you can use that body as a spoiler.

That's where the guys are beating us today. You see in qualifying that the times are really not that far apart, three or four tenths on a mile-and-a-half track from first to last. But when the tires get wore out, that's when the body really pays off.

That's where we're paying the price in the race. Our car slides around a lot more than everybody else's. If we can get our bodies and our aero department better, it'll make a better racecar of it.

This weekend, we're going to California with the best racecar that I've ever sat in, as far as what I think we need in aerodynamics and what the body should look like to help us throughout the day. It should tell us a lot.

That's the biggest thing. Those guys at DEI and RCR are able, with the manpower they have, to cut bodies off day in and day out and try things to make 'em better. At the Pettys, we've got the manpower, but we don't have that manpower.

These guys work really, really hard, and I'm proud of what they've turned out and what they can turn out. But also, we're still behind there.

The good thing is, they know it. They're able to work on it, and they want to work on it and make it better. With that attitude, I think we'll go a long way with that.

That was a question I was going to ask, about Kyle's willingness to change the culture over there. For years, the Pettys have been somewhat behind in technological areas.

But from what you're saying, it sounds like they're a little bit behind, but they know what they need to do to catch up to these other teams.

Green: Yeah, I think they do. Me, as another competitor, looking in, thought Petty Enterprises was a lot further off than they were. But the first time I sat in that car at Dover last year, we had a top-15 car and couldn't ask for a better bunch of guys to welcome me with open arms. That really made me feel good.

But we all knew we still had a lot of work to do. The thing about it, the guys that are winning races today are working to make their stuff better.

It seems like we're always just a little bit behind. If we can put it in another gear, where we can at least catch up with them - I think we can compete with them today.

My idea of winning races and being very competitive is going out there and dominating, going out there and leading laps. If you had a bad pit stop, you could make it up.

Today, if we have a bad pit stop, we can't make it up. We're that far behind. That puts us that much further behind. We've just got to make sure we get our cars good enough to where we can do that.

Do you see Richard (Petty) around the shop much? What do you and him talk about? Does he chew your ear about how to do things?

Green: I tell you, I've driven for quite a few drivers. I drove for Dale Earnhardt, Richard Childress - it's been a while since he drove, but he still had that driver instinct.

Sometimes that's good, but sometimes that's bad. But Richard, he really doesn't say a lot. Every time he starts talking, he says, "Now, I'm not telling you how to drive."

He does have a lot of good ideas, but things have changed a lot since he's driven, too. He understands that, and he reasons with that because of that. That's the best of both worlds. You can hear his ideas, and you can decipher whether that can help you or not. He gives you that attitude.

He's just a good buddy. He treats you that way. He doesn't treat me any different today than he did two or three years ago in the garage area.

He treats you like a friend, and that's the way you want to be treated. I treat people like I want to be treated, and that's exactly the way he treats you.

He's definitely there to lean on him if you need him, but he also stands back and watches, too. I think that's the best of both worlds.

And Dale Inman's come back in the shop some and from what I've heard seems to have picked up the intensity and the level of excitement in the shop. Have you seen that?

Green: He tells a lot of stories. He's got some good stories. Richard does, too. But Dale's smart enough that he can put the 1970s and the 1980s away. We're racing in 2000. He can decipher between that. He's very intelligent because of that. He definitely helps us with our cars, and he helps that race team get from racetrack to racetrack.

He's kind of like a hawk. He sits down and watches throughout the garage area, he goes up on the spotting stand in practice, and he can see a guy running a different line, and he can tell Kyle and myself that.

That will help us. The spotters have their job to do, and they can't always watch that. But Dale's a third set of eyes that can watch things like that that will help us throughout the day. That's the biggest thing he does.

Last question, and probably the most important. You're in Cup, David's in Busch, and Mark's kind of looking for a ride. Does that mean that you're the best Green brother?

Green: (Laughing). Well, I'm going to say I am. David's going to say he's the best one, and Mark's going to say he's the best. But I think we're all as good as the next. I've been very lucky and very blessed to be able to get with some good race teams to show what I can do.

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David has to, but Mark, it seems like he's always been that step behind to get with that perfect race team or that race team where he can show what he can do.

We raced go-karts together, and we raced Late Models together growing up. If I had to pick one, I think Mark's better than both of us. He's got that laid-back attitude, but he also can go out there and get it, too. You have to have that these days.

I was just the opposite. I would go out there and tear my fenders up and tear the nose off of it, and then wonder why I didn't win. In my older age, I'm kind of backing up a little bit.

Mark hasn't shown what he can do. Unfortunately, this sport has changed. When we were trying to get in it 10 or 15 years ago, it was all about experience. You had to have experience on these mile-and-a-half tracks, you had to make sure you ran Charlotte before anybody ever looked at you.

Now, if you've got your driver's license, you're welcome in, you know? That's just the way it is. That's what the sponsor's looking for, they're looking for youth. It's getting tougher every day for an older guy.

I don't think we're old. It's just getting tougher for us just to get that opportunity. If you've got a good ride like I do with Petty Enterprises, you better be blessed. I feel fortunate to have that, just the way this day and time is going.