Around the Track: All-Star Challenge

Lowe's Motor Speedway is the scene of two consecutive weekends of stock-car action in May, when the activities surrounding the Nextel All-Star Challenge precede those of the Coca-Cola 600.

The site of Saturday night's 21st annual all-star event, Lowe's is one of three similarly shaped 1.5-mile ovals owned by Speedway Motorsports Inc., but a complete grinding job done to the track surface prior to this spring put a new twist on its already unique characteristics.

Lowe's four turns are banked 24 degrees, with five-degree banking on the straightaways: The 1,360-foot backstretch and the double-doglegged 1,952-foot frontstretch, which has the start/finish line just past the first kink.

The Nextel All-Star Challenge is an awesome weekend. I have a lot of fun on that weekend -- everybody does.

Jeff Burton

You get to go out there and race hard, because it's not about points -- it's all about going out and racing hard just for that race.

Obviously, you're trying to learn all that you can for the Coca-Cola 600 week, but it's just so much fun.

Racing for points can be a stressful thing from time to time. So when you can go out there and lay it all on the line, going for the win it's just a lot of fun.

Qualifying for the Nextel All-Star Challenge -- making three laps with a four-tire stop -- is really fun, because it includes the pit crew. It adds another element in there, and the crews take so much pride in being able to have good pit stops.

Good pit stops show up so much there at Charlotte. If people clock everybody's lap times, normally the guy that sits on the pole for the All-Star race isn't the fastest car.

He got on pit road good, he got off pit road good and that's where most of the time comes from. You can make up more time there than you can on the racetrack.

You can have great laps and a great stop -- and that's a whole 'nother deal -- but if you can have decent laps and great pit stop that'll get you the pole.

I think it gets the guys on the pit crew pumped up -- to have an effect on where we actually start. I think that any time the pit crews have an opportunity to shine and to show people what they can do, they get pumped up.

It's just them, you know? And when you have a pit stop during a regular race week, it's 20 cars coming on pit road at the same time and in this deal, it's just them.

The spotlight's on them for that time, and I think they enjoy that.

The short segments in the All-Star Challenge take some of the strategy of worrying about long green flag runs out of it, that's for sure.

It is much more of a go-hard type of a race, where you can just lay it to the floor and don't worry about saving tires, and all those kinds of things. In that respect, it is much more like Saturday night short track racing.

As far as getting the best car you can possibly have for the final 10-lap shootout, I think you've got to be close from the start.

I don't think you can take a car that can't win and all of a sudden make it a winning car for that short segment.

Now, because that short segment is short and so many things do happen, you can find yourself in position to win the race without the best car when time runs out on everybody else.

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So you've got to go into that race knowing that you can try to get a lot done with a car that wouldn't win a normal race, but one that can win that special race.

As far as taking more chances or going for broke in the final shootout, I've always approached the Nextel All-Star Challenge weekend as being a chance to learn something. I don't like just throwing caution to the wind.

It's a racecar, and we don't need to be tearing up racecars because we need those in our inventory.

The people that have a big inventory and can go there without worrying about that have a distinct advantage because we're not in that position. We're in a position of needing racecars right now and we can't just drive like there's no tomorrow.

But I've always done like that. These 10-lap races don't necessarily suit my style as well as the big, long races do.

I don't tend to excel in the things that are short laps. I do much better in things that have some longevity to them.

In the end, I think that winning the All-Star race is something that you can share even more with the crew than you can an ordinary race -- because it's quick and they can have such an impact on the outcome.

I think that the tempo is different. It's much more like an overtime win or a sudden-death shootout in golf, where you don't have this huge buildup.

You have this short run and I think that it is something that gets people more pumped up than a normal win.

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