Ward Burton: Siemens 300 preview

Ward Burton will make his 341st NASCAR Nextel Cup Series start when the green flag drops for the New England 300 at New Hampshire International Speedway. Crew Chief Bill Ingle will be on board for his first race with the NetZero Racing team.

We're looking forward to getting to New Hampshire. We've got Bill Ingle on board for the first time, so it will be a weekend of getting to know each other, I think. We had the opportunity to spend a couple of days testing in Indianapolis together which certainly helped our communication, but you need a race weekend to really see how things are going to go. We'll do our best this weekend and hopefully this will be a good move for us in the long run. We know were we need to be and we know what we are capable of with this NetZero Racing team, so hopefully this will be the start of a lot of good things to come.

One of the things I've learned over the years about New Hampshire is how important it is to qualify well. You've got to get up front and stay there one way or another. If you have problems in qualifying then you have to think about other ways to get there like pit strategy or something like that. When I won in 2002 we may not have been the best car, but we made some of the smartest moves to get to the front, and we were there when it counted. Passing is tough and you need to be able to stay on the bottom of the track, so handling is key. You've got to have a car that is capable of driving deep into the corners but you need to make sure not to use up your brakes. It's a mile track, but it has a lot of the same characteristics of the flat, short tracks we go to."