Around the Track: Texas

Texas Motor Speedway, a quad-oval similar in configuration to Atlanta Motor Speedway and Lowe's Motor Speedway, is also one of the fastest tracks.

The 1.5-mile layout has 24-degree banking in its four symmetrical turns, a 1,330-foot backstretch and a 2,250-foot frontstretch that is bisected by the start/finish line midway between Turns 4 and 1.

For the first time this season, Texas will have two Nextel Cup races. The spring event is the "traditional" race that began in controversy in 1997, but has evolved into one of the series' more popular stops.

When I think of Texas, I think fast. Texas is a real fast racetrack, especially in qualifying mode. In qualifying, man, it's a really, really fast racetrack -- almost wide-open.

	JEFF BURTON •   Driver Page •   2005 Stats •   Article Archive

It's a fun racetrack, though I actually liked the old racetrack, when it was all messed up because you really had to concentrate really hard.

It's a difficult racetrack because getting into Turn 1 is unlike any corner that we have. Turn 4 is really wide open and you can run almost anywhere, there.

But you're probably going to see a competitive race when you go there. Handling is everything, just like it is at every other racetrack.

You've got to handle well. There's enough straightaway there that engine matters, too -- but the main thing is how well you handle.

On a qualifying run at Texas, you've really got to be precise. If you miss your mark at all -- well, the faster the racetrack, the more problems are magnified. When you have a fast racetrack, you really have to make sure you do everything just right.

And you've got to drive it hard. If you didn't have a good lap you need to come into the pits saying, "We didn't have a good lap because I drove too hard," versus the other way around.

Some racetracks you've got to make sure you don't drive it too hard, and Texas is one of those tracks that it's better for the driver to come in and say "Well, I tried too hard and drove too hard" than "I didn't drive hard enough."

You can't forget in the race at Texas that track position is really big. You've got to have good track position. But it's a long race, too.

It doesn't matter where you're running at lap 10 -- it matters where you're running at the end. It'll be high speed but I think there will be a lot of fall-off in speed this year, from the first lap to the 50th lap of a run.

You really approach the race thinking, "What do we need to do to get the car handling the best that we can," but also "What do we need to do to make sure that we have the track position that's really, really important?"

Because at Texas it's hard to pass and you've got to have good track position.

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You don't want to miss the set-up, even a little bit. The thing is, the laps go by so fast there and the traffic gets spread out so that if you do miss the set-up, you can get yourself in trouble really quickly and get behind really quickly.

Texas is a bad place to miss the set-up really bad, because there's so much corner and so much corner speed that when you're off 10 percent that's a great deal -- and you just can't afford to be off.

Of course, a high-speed racetrack creates different dimensions for pitting, and the entrance to pit road at Texas is really tight -- it's tough and it's easy to miss that pit road.

There's a pretty big transition between the racetrack and pit road so you've got to be really careful how you're getting on pit road because you can end up in the grass, spinning around, you know what I mean?

So you got to really work on getting onto pit road as quick as you can, but also not to over-shoot pit road.

The pit boxes are good at Texas and the exit off pit road is good, but it's really, really difficult to get onto pit road.

Basically, there's nothing the same with the Texas we'll race on this weekend and the racetrack that I won on, the first time we raced there in 1997.

The track I won on in '97 -- the only thing left of it is the grandstands and part of the straightaway -- it's changed that much.

It's a good surface at Texas, with a pretty good amount of grip. It's not glass smooth, but it's a fairly smooth racetrack. It's not as smooth as some, but it's also not as rough as others.

All in all it's a really good racetrack. A big help there this year will be the soft walls because when you do hit at Texas, you hit hard. There are no easy wrecks at Texas.

The soft walls that we'll have this year will be a really good deal.

And again, it's another mile-and-a-half racetrack that it's so important to be good on because we have so many of them -- and if you're going to struggle at Texas, you're probably going to struggle at Charlotte and some other places, too.

It's just not the kind of track, based on our schedule today that you can afford to struggle on.

Jeff Burton, driver of the No. 31 Cingular Chevrolet, will take fans Around the Track each race week during the 2005 Nextel Cup season.