Greenburg brings a new side of Johnson to HBO

As president of HBO Sports, Ross Greenburg has helped develop some of the finest sports-related reality series in the history of television.

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Jimmie Johnson is known in NASCAR as being vanilla, but he, along with agents, hope to change that image with a new series on HBO.

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• Pit crew to play a role

Now he hopes to bring that expertise to NASCAR with a four-episode, all-access series that will chronicle driver Jimmie Johnson's preparation for and participation in the 2010 Daytona 500 next February. Entitled 24/7 Jimmie Johnson: Race to Daytona, Greenburg talked about how he envisions the series will be a mix of the 24/7 franchise made famous through following boxers before huge bouts and the HBO Hard Knocks series that follows a NFL team through training camp leading up to its season.

In an interview with NASCAR.COM, he also touched on how it all came about and admitted unabashedly that he will be rooting for Johnson to win the next Daytona 500.

Question: The HBO 24/7 franchise was built on the sport of boxing and until this hasn't ventured into other sports. Why NASCAR? Why now?

Greenburg: It's true the series 24/7 has not ventured outside of boxing, although we did launch Hard Knocks, where we followed a [NFL] team in training camp, in 2000. This show has a lot of similarities to that as well.

I think there is a lack of understanding in this country as to what goes on behind the scenes in preparation for a NASCAR race. I think that what we do with Chad Knaus and Jimmie Johnson -- even Chandra, Jimmie's wife, and Rick Hendrick and the whole Hendrick Motorsports operation, will be enlightening to a lot of people. So much goes into the prep for a race -- and obviously there is no bigger race than the Daytona 500. And there is no more celebrated driver today than Jimmie Johnson.

Jimmie actually reached out first. He reached out through CAA (Creative Artists Agency, a Hollywood-based firm which was hired by Johnson to find new ways to get his name and face out there). A gentleman named Jack Tiernan first called me almost a year ago, and said Jimmie had fallen in love with the 24/7 series on boxing. It was almost his idea to take that same format into NASCAR. So when I got the call, we jumped at the opportunity. (Continued)