SPECIAL PAINT DESIGN: For the second time this season, the No. 66 Haas CNC Racing Chevrolet, driven by Jeff Green, will carry a special paint design promoting Samsung HDTV’s.

The special blue and white design features a photo of a Samsung HDTV on the hood of the No. 66, with the Samsung HDTV logo appearing on the TV’s screen. Best Buy, the primary sponsor of the No. 66 Chevrolet in a number of NEXTEL Cup Series events this season, is a proud retailer of Samsung HDTV’s. The iconic Best Buy yellow tag logo will occupy a position on the car’s lower quarter panels.

Samsung HDTV logos will also appear on the car’s deck lid and TV panel, while Garmin and Comcast, two Best Buy retail partners who are associate sponsors of the No. 66 team, will have their logos displayed on the car’s rear quarter panels.

Samsung was also featured on the hood of the No. 66 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway in March, to promote Samsung’s Four Seasons of Hope, an innovative goodwill program dedicated to raising awareness and funds through their national retail promotions with Best Buy and other retailers.

Samsung Electronics of America, which sold more digital televisions than any other manufacturer in the United States last year, is an associate sponsor of the No. 66 Best Buy Chevrolet.

DOUBLE TIME: Fans watching the Sharpie 500 NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series event will see the Best Buy logo on more than one car this weekend. In addition to its placement on Jeff Green’s No. 66 Chevrolet, the yellow Best Buy tag will also be featured on the No. 96 DLP HDTV Chevrolet, driven by Tony Raines.

Best Buy is one of the nation’s largest retailers of DLP HDTV’s, including those produced by Samsung Electronics, the market leader for digital TV’s in the United States. Samsung HDTV is the featured sponsor on the No. 66 Chevrolet this weekend.

Driver Jeff Green – “This is a pretty unique thing to see Tony (Raines) and I both driving cars promoting Best Buy and DLP HDTV’s. I don’t recall ever seeing two sponsors doing cross promotion like this on cars that are fielded by different teams.

“I hope we can both bring home great finishes for Best Buy and the DLP folks. I think it would be great if we could finish first and second. No offense to Tony, but since Samsung is the number one manufacturer of DLP HDTV’s, I’m hoping I’ll be the first to cross the finish line. That only seems right to me, but I’m betting Tony might see things differently.”

6-6-6 in the No. 66 – The No. 66 Haas CNC Racing team has posted three top-10 finishes this season, with all of them coming in ‘COT’ races – and all three resulting in sixth-place finishes. Driver Jeff Green qualified ninth and finished sixth in the March race at Bristol Motor Speedway, the debut race for the COT. In April, the team started 14th and finished sixth at Phoenix International Raceway, and Green started 15th and finished sixth at New Hampshire International Speedway in July.

Driver Jeff Green – “There’s probably someone with too much time on their hands who’ll say there’s some significance to my car number being (No.) 66 and where we’ve finished, with the whole ‘6-6-6’ thing. I don’t put much thought into it. It’s kind of funny to me. I’ll take sixth-place finishes in every race for the rest of the year and smile from ear to ear about it.”

CHASSIS – HAAS CNC RACING Chassis No. 450 – This chassis is a brand new addition to the Haas CNC Racing stable, and has never been on a race track before this weekend.

RAIN DISRUPTS TEST SCHEDULING: The rain delays at Michigan threw a monkey wrench into the Best Buy team’s plan to attend a test session this week. The No. 66 crew was scheduled to spend Tuesday and Wednesday, Aug. 21-22, testing at the Milwaukee Mile track in Wisconsin, but had to cancel when NASCAR pushed the start of the race at Michigan International Speedway back to Tuesday morning.

Crew Chief Harold Holly – “We were going to take a couple of car of tomorrow chassis up to Milwaukee and work on our short track program for this weekend at Bristol (Motor Speedway) and the other car of tomorrow races we’ve got coming up.

“We feel pretty good about the ‘COT’ package we’ve got, but we had a couple of things we wanted to try. We’ll look to try and reschedule it somewhere down the line, but I really would have liked to have gotten it in before we headed to Bristol.”

Q&A WITH DRIVER JEFF GREEN

WHAT ARE YOUR EXPECTATIONS FOR THE WEEKEND? ARE YOU EXCITED TO BE BACK IN A CAR OF TOMORROW AT A SHORT TRACK? “I’m definitely excited to be back in the car of tomorrow, especially at Bristol (Motor Speedway). I feel like I’ve beaten this to death, but this car is just so much more like the cars we drove years ago, and they just seem to fit my driving style better than the other cars we drive.

“We qualified top-10 back in March here, which gave us our best starting spot of the year, but the other decent qualifying efforts we’ve had were also in the ‘COT’ cars at places like Richmond and New Hampshire and Phoenix. With the new track surface, I think track position is going to be key, so if we can back up the qualifying laps we posted at some of these other short tracks, I think we’ll be in good shape.”

DO YOU HAVE ANY FAVORITE BRISTOL MEMORIES? “My favorite Bristol memory is when I won a Busch (Series) race here back in 2002 when I was driving for Richard Childress, and I consider it a huge accomplishment to have visited Victory Lane here. It’s one of those tracks you definitely want to be able to mark off your list. I put it right up there with winning at Darlington (Raceway), Richmond (International Raceway), and the old Nashville Speedway.

“I’d love to be able to add Daytona (International Speedway) and Indianapolis (Motor Speedway) to the win list, but I’m very proud to have a trophy from Bristol. When I’m an old man in a rocking chair, I’ll be able to look at that trophy and know that I won on one of the toughest, most historic tracks on the circuit.”

Q&A WITH CREW CHIEF HAROLD HOLLY:

WHAT ARE YOU HEARING ABOUT THE NEW RACE SURFACE AT BRISTOL MOTOR SPEEDWAY? “I’m hearing that the transitions (from the straightaways to the turns) are gone now, and that the track is incredibly smooth. Hopefully, by the time we get on the track, there will be enough rubber put down by the (Craftsman) trucks and the Busch (Series) cars that it will have some good grooves for us to work with.

“If some of the guys will go up to the high line and work in some rubber in the truck and Busch cars, I think we can have some good side-by-side racing, but if everyone stays in the low line (during practice), I think you’re going to see a lot of ‘follow the leader’ and people will have to bump each other to move someone out of the way and pass.

“They say it’s got gradual banking now, like Homestead (-Miami Speedway), and the straightaways are more banked than they were. In testing, guys were actually about four-10ths (of a second) slower than in years past, but I think some guys were taking it easy on the new surface until they get some more rubber down. It’s going to be interesting. I’ll definitely be talking to my buddies in the truck and Busch series to see what their drivers are saying.

“At least we’re all in the same boat as far as none of the Cup teams having made any laps. We’re all going to be trying to figure it out in that first practice on Friday."

JEFF GREEN’S HISTORY AT BRISTOL MOTOR SPEEDWAY: In 14 Cup series starts at Bristol, Jeff Green has one pole, which he scored in the August, 2001, race while driving for Richard Childress Racing. Green’s best finish is a 6th-place result, which came in March of this year.

HAAS CNC RACING’S HISTORY AT BRISTOL MOTOR SPEEDWAY: In nine Nextel Cup Series starts at Bristol Motor Speedway, Haas CNC Racing’s best starting spot is a ninth-place qualifying effort, which Jeff Green accomplished in the March, 2007, race. The team’s best finish is a sixth-place result, which came in that same event.