Burton hopes changes in team fuel turnaround

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- As fresh starts go, this week's preseason Winston Cup test hardly opened with a flourish for Jeff Burton.

Hell-bent on rejoining his Roush Racing teammates as a top-10 fixture, Burton sputtered rather sprinted during Tuesday's first sessions at Daytona International Speedway.

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His No. 99 Ford's top speed of 180.108 mph was just 20th-fastest in the morning installment. And things didn't improve. Burton's afternoon best of 180.307 mph ranked only 32nd. Overall, he ranked 20th out of 25 drivers at day's end, a result depressing enough to warrant a conversation with owner Jack Roush.

"I told Jack Tuesday night, 'You know, I'm really down,'" Burton said. "I came here with high hopes and run like crap, and I feel really bad and dejected. He looked at me and said, 'Man, we'll get through Daytona and then we'll go to Rockingham, and then we'll go to Vegas.' And he's right."

Translation: Daytona's restrictor-plate conditions don't color an entire season.

And Burton's times improved Wednesday. His best of 182.046 mph ranked 15th in the morning session. Later, 182.400 mph was good enough for 14th in the afternoon. He finished the day 12th overall and in better spirits.

"You gotta be careful not to get down or to get too excited about it," Burton said. "It's one race. But at the same time, I'm competitive. I want to come here and compete at the highest level."

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It's also what he wants to do in 2003. Burton was the Roush Racing caboose last season, finishing 12th in the final standings. Teammates Mark Martin and Kurt Busch finished second and third, respectively, and Matt Kenseth, who won a series-high five races, finished eighth.

Compounding the matter, Martin battled series champ Tony Stewart to the end, while Roush teams won four of the final five races. Busch posted back-to-back victories at Martinsville and Atlanta and won the season-finale at Homestead. Kenseth won at Phoenix.

As Burton begins his 10th Cup season, he wants to avoid sub-10th-place finishes.

"I am excited," he said. "It's a little early for me to get excited. I've done this long enough to know that there's a lot of things that are going to happen to us this year."

The things that happened last season remain paramount. Burton parted ways with crew chief Frankie Stoddard after last year's Southern 500. Paul Andrews, who had been Steve Park's crew chief, replaced Stoddard, and the final two months of the season saw Burton's qualifying performances improve. He was a factor in several races, most notably at Kansas, and he and Andrews began laying a personal and professional foundation.

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"I think this could be his year," Roush said of Burton, who finished third in the 2000 points race, but fell to 10th in 2001. Last year's slump extension mandated the crew chief change -- Burton was the only Roush driver who didn't win in 2002 -- and more changes were made in the offseason, particularly in the pit crew.

Eric Slade is the new shock specialist and catch-can guy. Shawn Allen is the new gas guy after manning the catch can last year. Donnie Brown is the new front tire changer, and Rick Boyles is the new rear tire changer. The new tire specialist is Jack Hickman.

"We had a big turnover there," Burton said. "And we needed it. We were behind on our pit stops last year. Not cause we didn't try hard. Everybody tried really hard, but we weren't having the best pit stops on pit road, and our teammates were doing it better than we were on pit road."

Which meant more organizational onus. Kenseth's guys won the annual pit-crew challenge for the second consecutive season, while Martin and Busch's teams finished in the top-five. There were a few other personnel moves, mostly in the shop, but with the exception of Andrews, the No. 99's brain trust remains intact.

"What we did was, we tried to bring in some new, fresh ideas with some young people," Burton said. "Some older people that haven't been in Winston Cup for a long time, and mix those with the experienced guys. Try to create a situation like you have in college basketball with seniors and some new freshmen coming in."

And although he's thrilled with Andrews' leadership, he knows their relationship is a work in progress, too -- they'll need more than one Daytona 500 to mold their future.

"This is tough," Burton said of a career rebound. "This is hard. If you had told me in 2001 that we would have run as bad as we did, and in 2002 we ran as bad as we did, I would've never believed that before the year started. So I'm not trying to downplay what we can do, because I think we can do a lot of great things, but at the same time, it's going to be hard."