Around the Track: Dover

Dover International Speedway hosts the second event in the Chase for the Nextel Cup for the second consecutive year, in Sunday afternoon's MBNA RacePoints 400.

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In his latest edition of Cingular's "Around the Track," Jeff Burton talks about how his Richard Childress Racing team has begun to get his No. 31 Chevrolet effective on a week-to-week basis, what it takes to get around the lightning-fast, high-banked one-mile concrete oval and, most importantly, how he thinks Dover might affect the Chase.

Jeff Burton: With the final 10 races being about building for next year, it's a good question how close we are to getting to the top of the hill with our Cingular Chevy.

We have three tests left for the last seven races, so we'll use those effectively. Our effort is about running well this year and next year -- we're not just giving up because we can still do a lot of good things this season.

We have a lot of good tracks coming up for us. There are a lot of mile-and-a-half tracks in the last part of the season, so it gives us a chance to focus on those and hopefully get that program right for next year.

I don't know how far away we are, but we are making a lot of changes and doing things differently. It feels right, but the results are what matter.

I know that our aero program is a lot better than it was when we started the year. We've just improved in a lot of areas.

Like I said, results are the only thing that matters, but at the end of the day you have to look back and see how we were running at the tracks and what were we doing.

It's definite that we have run better than we have finished in a bunch of cases. We just need to put it all together.

It would be a boost for the team to score more points than some teams in the Chase over the final 10 races because that would mean we'd be succeeding.

The more points we can score, the better we are doing as a team. Anytime you can end the year on a positive note, I think that's a good thing.

The Chase itself is a hard thing to handicap. If you really look at it, I think there are about four teams that run fast enough to win it.

Then there are maybe three or four that are just a step behind, that if they stay out of trouble and are consistent they can win it.

I think Talladega will have a huge impact and I think the race at Martinsville will have a big impact.

I think the teams that run well at every racetrack: The 97 (Kurt Busch), the 17 (Matt Kenseth) and the 20 (Tony Stewart) -- those are the three that I think have the best chance to win the championship.

The 6 (Mark Martin) runs well at all those racetracks, too, but he just seems like he's about a quarter-step behind. Those are the guys that I look at as having the best chance to win it all.

But next we've got to go to Dover.

Dover is a track with a tremendous amount of grip, but it's a rough racetrack. You feel every seam of the concrete.

You run right against the wall on the straightaway and stay out there late against the wall before you turn into the corner.

Turn 2 is very, very tight and it's easy to get in the wall right there -- it's hard to keep grip.

Turn 3 is a very, very fast corner. You get down in there and almost as soon as you get in the corner you're wide open again as you come to the start/finish line, where you're right up against the wall. Even though it's a one-mile track, it's still very tight. You can run right on the bottom of the racetrack, or you can run two grooves up. The track likes a lot of grooves but I like running on the bottom.

It's an interesting racetrack because there is so much room in the corners and none on the straightaways. Normally, it's the other way around.

Really, it's a weird racetrack where the corners are so big that if you have a problem getting in the corner, you kind of have some room to maneuver. But if it's on the straightaway, you are in trouble.

The straightaways are very narrow and if something happens coming off the corners, which is where most wrecks happen, you have very few options on missing the wreck because the track is very narrow.

If you get spun there or you spin there, you're going to hit something. Very rarely does somebody get by without hitting something, and if you hit something at Dover, you hit pretty hard.

You don't have an easy wreck at Dover -- you don't just do a little fender damage. You pretty much put it on the trailer after wrecking at Dover.

Around the TrackJeff Burton and EASports take you for a lap at Dover Sign up for TrackPass now BUY YOUR NEXTEL DRIVER PHONE

This racetrack is a track that the guys in the Chase are really nervous about, and the reason why is if something happens in front of you, there's nowhere to go -- you just kind of hope you're in the right place at the right time.

In June at Dover, we finished 12th and ran pretty decent. We were just a little bit behind the guys who were really fast.

We ran a totally different set-up than what we are going to Dover with for this race.

Before the June race the 29 (RCR teammate Kevin Harvick) went to Dover to test and thought they had some success -- so we decided to follow that program. They didn't have a very good weekend, but we ended up making something of it.

It wasn't quite what we wanted, so we'll go back this time with quite a bit different set-up. We tested at Charlotte (Lowe's Motor Speedway) this week, so I really think that will help us get ready for Dover.