Mark Green Clips Atlanta Race Report

The tone for Atlanta was set Friday when rain made a mess of the schedule and greatly curtailed practice time for Mark Green and the Akins Motorsports Great Clips #38 Ford racing team.  We were supposed to get several hours of practice on the very fast and difficult 1.5-mile Atlanta Motor Speedway, but ended up with only six hard laps on the track before the race.  After the rain most of the morning the officials canceled qualifying and set the field by owner's points so that what limited track time was left could be used for practice.  This put Mark starting 30th.  The cars finally got on the track late that afternoon.  The cars were then staged on pit road by owner's points, which had Mark 30th in the line.  The NASCAR Busch Series officials don't like for the track to be too crowded during practice so and they only let about twenty-five cars or so be on the track at one time.  This meant that Mark didn't get out with the first group and he would have to sit on pit road until five cars came back to the garage.  Before he could get on the track Shane Hmiel in the #47 car blew a motor oiling the track and closing it down while the maintenance crews went out to get the oil up and the track back in racing condition.  During this time the cars that had been out practicing came back to the garage and started making adjustments based on what they had just learned, while Mark still sat on pit road.  It took 20 minutes to get the track cleaned up before Mark took his first laps.  He ran three hard laps and came to the garage for adjustments to the car and motor, then was able to get back out for three more laps before the practice ended.  This shouldn't have been to bad because there was another hour practice scheduled after the Winston Cup cars practiced.  As the Busch cars pulled on pit road for the second practice it started raining again canceling that session and the Winston Cup qualifying that was to have taken place after it.  This left the team in the position of having to resort to some guess work as to what the car would need chassis wise for the race.

The Atlanta race was not originally on the Akins Motorsports schedule for this year and was only added a week or so before the event.  This meant that there was no opportunity to get in any pre-race testing.  The track is one of the fastest in NASCAR with wide sweeping turns that allow the engines to stay at high rpm's, turning laps at over 180 miles per hour.  If a car is off just a small bit it can have the drivers entering the turns on the edge of control increasing the odds of a hard wreck and a destroyed race car. 

Saturday dawned with a heavy overcast sky and it looked like it could rain at any time.  Their were a few light showers during the race but it never got so bad that it had to be stopped.  Mark reported the car was loose entering the turns shortly after the race started.  This is not what you want at Atlanta.  At one time he said that he had to turn the front wheels to the right as he went into the left hand corners to counter the tail wanting to come around on him.  Think about that at 180 mph.  The crew worked all race to get the car tighter, but those adjustments while helping some caused extreme wear on the front right tire and after the race upon inspection it was close to blowing out.  Putting their heads together after the race the only explanation they could come up with was that the car they took to Atlanta had too much downforce on the nose and the limited time on the track had not given them time to diagnose that and come up with a way to better balance the car before the race.  This resulted in a 28th place finish, but the car did leave the track in one piece and undamaged.

The Friday Atlanta Journal-Constitution picked up from our press release the note about Brad Akins not being able to make the race, due to it being scheduled for our team after he had made plans to take his family and some friends to the University of Georgia football game in Kentucky.  That paper has a circulation of just under 500,000 on Fridays.  Several Great Clips franchise owners came to the race and appreciated the Akins Motorsports hospitality extended to them on Saturday.  It was interesting that on Friday, when I first went into the media center, a girl who was working security at the door stopped me when she saw my Great Clips racing jacket and said she worked at the Great Clips store in Spivey Junction, Georgia.  When I told Doug Stringer about it he gave me a Great Clips racing hat to give her, which she greatly appreciated.  Saturday morning Mark went to the EasyCare hospitality tent in the infield where he spoke, answered questions and signed over 100 Great Clips autograph cards.  EasyCare also had a Great Clips racing banner hanging in the tent.

This week the race is at the North Carolina Motor Speedway just below the Pinehurst-Southern Pines golf resort area.  Practice and qualifying are scheduled for Friday with a 1:00 ET start Saturday.  The race will be televised nationally on the TNT Network.  Mark has competed at the track 11 times with best starts of 5th and 8th and best finishes of 8th and 9th at the tricky one-mile speedway.