1on1: Mark Green has a full plate balancing two careers (cont'd)

Q: Since your family was the last one to move to the Carolinas, how much are you and your brothers able to get together?

Mark Green: We'll go back home to Owensboro for Thanksgiving and Christmas, and we see each other then. But we actually see each other more at the race track. And that's just because David's got a couple kids and he lives in Concord. And I've got my two kids, Rachel and Tyler, and we live in China Grove, which is not that far, but everybody's doing so many different things.

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When [the Green brothers are] home we're taking care of family stuff and paying bills and mowing grass and all that stuff. When we're at the race track, that common bond brings us right back together.

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-- MARK GREEN

And then Jeff has got all his stuff going on, so our common bond is racing. You know, it's not like we don't like each other [smiling], but everybody's got so much different stuff going on. When we're home we're taking care of family stuff and paying bills and mowing grass and all that stuff.

When we're at the race track, that common bond brings us right back together.

Q: Is the Green Foundation Golf Tournament going to happen this year, and how neat has that been, to do a benefit for your old home town?

Mark Green: We never really thought that we'd be in a position to do something like that. To make a long story short, Michael [Waltrip] started that thing nine years ago, when he had family still in Owensboro. When his family moved over to [the Carolinas] it kind of took away from it, for him so we just kind of took it over.

We've had to discontinue it this year because we'd found that with so many drivers having similar foundations, it spreads the wealth out quite a bit, if you will. And Cathy and Jeff's wife, Michelle, had actually done a lot of the work to carry it off. Cathy has started an event planning business, Plum Chic, with Rachel and Rachel's mother-in-law, so that's keeping her pretty busy, as well.

But while we did it, it was such a great thing to do because growing up in Owensboro, we were just kids and not that big in the area. So to be able to go back and give to the charities around home that helped us when we were kids -- like the Boys and Girls Clubs and all those kinds of things -- it made us feel good knowing we could help people that helped us.

Q: What's Mark Green's racing landscape looking like for 2009?

Mark Green: The ML Motorsports [Nationwide Series] team is running about 20 races, which we did last year. Mary Louise and Dane Miller, who own that thing, are such good people. That's their passion, they just love racing and that's all they want to get out of it, is to go and have a good time and see their car run good.

Over at Earnhardt Ganassi Racing, I spot for Aric Almirola. Aric and I have been friends ever since he started at Gibbs, doing the Truck stuff [in 2005], and I started spotting for him, a little bit, there.

Aric is such a good, respectful person and I can help him do things, through my experiences, that he don't have to worry about going through. We get along so good and like I say, he's such a good person, you don't NOT want to help him. So I do that.

And then I've got all my racing endeavors with Tyler, so we do that. I built a 30x40-foot shop at the house that, according to Cathy is 'packed to the brim' with the Late Model, Legends cars and it even has David's son Austin's Bandolero in it.

Then, on a side note, and I hope Cathy doesn't hear it, but I always have to do all the stuff for her like mowing the grass and cleaning the house, cleaning the garage and taking the trash out.

And last but not least, I have my little hobby, which is go karts. We grew up racing go karts until we were teenagers, and I have seven go karts: two current karts that we run down at Lowe's and then I have five vintage karts that I've found and restored. Vintage kart racing is really big in the United States right now, so I've got some of those.

Q: What's the hot tip for you on the current kart scene?

Mark Green: Karting is so much fun and you hear about all these guys that have workout programs and trainers and all this. There is no better exercise for a race car driver than to drive a road course go kart. We run out at Lowe's.

Jamie [McMurray] I think has got some shifter karts and a Tag kart, which has got a battery and a starter on it and you just start it up. I've got a Tag kart like Jamie's got and I've also got a direct drive ICC kart, which is one of the classes they run over in Europe, so I've got a couple different variations.

And then I've got my old karts, and they're old school, they're a little smaller and they've got smaller tires, but they're such a handful to drive they're just more fun.