Mark Green admits it easily. When you're a child born into a family of devout racers, chances are you'll gravitate toward involvement in racing.

That's what Green, the middle of the three racing brothers from Owensboro, Ky., found and gladly accepted as his son, Tyler, grew up. His daughter also works in the industry.

“

If [Tyler] wants to [race], we'll give him the chances that we can afford to give him.

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-- MARK GREEN

These days, Mark Green, 49, finds going racing with Tyler, who just turned 20, is the perfect family activity for himself, wife Cathy and their daughter Rachel, now a college graduate and the sales coordinator at Lowe's Motor Speedway but a constant track companion as she grew up.

Mark Green was the last of the three brothers to hit the Carolinas, as he and his family relocated in 2000 to join older brother David, 51, and youngest brother Jeff, 46.

Last weekend at Bristol, Mark Green sat down to talk about maintaining his family's racing legacy, how he keeps up with his brothers, the Green Foundation golf tournament and what's on his docket this season.

Q: With everything you know and everything you and your brothers have experienced in their careers, when Tyler said he wanted to race, what did you think?

Mark Green: It's almost like he really didn't have a choice, because he goes [to the track] with me and both his uncles, you know? And I told him more than once; you know it's not all glitz and glamour? It's a lot of hard work and for the one Dale [Earnhardt] Jr. or Jimmie Johnson there's a thousand just like him that don't get that chance.

And unfortunately nowadays, with the way the economy is and all, it's more the financial part of it now. If you've got a young kid that's got money behind him he's going to go way farther than a kid that's got a lot of talent and no money.

So it's kind of disheartening for me, and I'm like every father I'm sure, because my son's pretty good at driving a race car, but I don't know if he'll get the chance to show it just because of the way the sport is now.

Q: You've got a busy racing schedule yourself, so when Tyler decided he wanted to race, did that create maybe the perfect way to have family outings and get more family time?

Mark Green: It is the perfect way, and I know when we -- David, Jeff and me -- were growing up, we started racing go-karts before we were teenagers, and my grandparents and parents, we would load up on Friday night, drive to a race and race Saturday and Sunday and come home Sunday night.

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He is good enough and he wants to do it and he enjoys it enough that now it's hard because we say, 'how are we going to advance this?' Without the support of some sponsorship or a car owner it's going to be hard to advance it.

”

-- MARK GREEN

The best thing that came out of that was the family time, where you were with your parents or your family. A lot of kids, with stick and ball sports, some of it you can get to, but it's not like racing because [racing] takes everybody to do it and you have to travel, so you're there with each other.

It just makes it to where you get that bond more, I think.

Q: Is it a bonus that Tyler's had some success since he's been racing?

Mark Green: It is a bonus. It's like I told Cathy. If he wants to do it, we'll give him the chances that we can afford to give him. And it's like man, if he wasn't good enough or didn't enjoy it as much, it would be easy to kind of walk away from it, for him.

But he is good enough and he wants to do it and he enjoys it enough that now it's hard because we say, 'how are we going to advance this?' I can spend the money to do it myself, doing some Legends racing and we ran 10 Late Model Stock Car races last year and we'll do that this year. But, you know, without the support of some sponsorship or a car owner it's going to be hard to advance it.

So from that aspect it's really hard for me because I know how hard it is to move up to the next level. Tyler just turned 20, so he's still a young man in most eyes, so we'll just keep digging.

Q: And how many championships has he won?

Mark Green: Since we moved over here he won his first title in the Young Guns class in the Bandolero division in the 2004 Summer Shootout Series. He also won the same class in the Winter Heat Series at Lowe's Motor Speedway.

We moved to the Legends class and he won the Young Lions title in the Winter Heat Series and the Winter Heat Pro title. Two years ago he should have won the Pro class, but Lowe's Motor Speedway management came out with a "Chase" format [smiling], and he had like a 600-point lead after seven races.

But after seven races they took the top 10 and there wasn't any point difference -- 10th had as many points as first place. So he got beat by 10 points for the championship and basically got screwed out of that deal. So I told him we've got a little unfinished business because we're going to go out there and make a dire effort to get that title that they took from us.

Q: What's his racing program going to be for 2009?

Mark Green: We've run Legends cars quite a bit around Charlotte. They run the Summer Shootout Series at Lowe's, which is a pretty good event because it gets a lot of exposure on SPEED. So we're going to do that, running in the Pro division. We've rebuilt our car and we've got it ready to go.

We've got a Late Model Stock car that we're going to run around Caraway [Speedway], Hickory [Speedway] and Tri-County [Speedway] -- we're going to run around home and we'll do that, financially, as many races as we can do.

So it's not a lot, but it keeps him driving and it keeps that flow going. We can't afford to run an ARCA car or a [Camping World] East car, just because of the financial part of it. So we just financially do what we can do and hopefully we can attract maybe some sponsorship or a car owner that has the opportunity to give somebody a chance.

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.

”

-- 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.