Around the Track: Martinsville

Jeff Burton once nailed together a streak of 11 top-10 finishes in 13 consecutive races at Martinsville Speedway, including eight top-five runs.

The notable string of finishes occurred between his first victory at the paperclip-shaped half-mile short track, in the fall of 1997, and the fall race in 2003, when he was 10th.

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In his 22 career starts, Burton has been running at the finish in the last 19 of them, proving that he has learned a thing or two about negotiating the tough concrete-and-asphalt "bull ring" that H. Clay Earles developed and that his family has continued to nurture.

Sunday afternoon's Subway 500, the sixth race in the Chase for the Nextel Cup, offers the challenge of the shortest track and one of the tightest pit roads that competitors see all season.

In his latest edition of Cingular's "Around the Track," the driver of Richard Childress Racing's No. 31 Chevrolet addresses the toughness of short-track racing and the value of patience and respect at Martinsville, the 32nd race in the Nextel Cup season.

Jeff Burton: I really like Martinsville and enjoy racing there. It's fun.

I think it's a throwback to what racing was and what it ought to be. It's good, tough, side-by-side racing.

It's a long day. I think physically it's the toughest track on the drivers that we go to. Inside those cars it's really hot with a lot of carbon monoxide exposure.

You're always up on somebody and somebody is always up on you at Martinsville. It's one of the hardest places we race all year, but you have fun.

Martinsville Speedway has changed since they ground their racetrack.

The middle has come to now be the preferred groove, which is really unusual for Martinsville. But, I think it is much like Talladega in that when you are out of the groove, there is no fighting it.

It is a hard race, though. You have to have good brakes and you have to use the brakes.

Inside the Numbers Jeff Burton at Martinsville Category No. Starts 22 Wins 1 Top-5 8 Top-10 11 DNF 3 Poles 0 Avg. Start 16.6 Avg. Finish 13.9

I mean, there is this thing about saving brakes at Martinsville, but you can only save your brakes if you are really fast and can just ride around and not get on them and use them really hard.

I don't believe there are that many drivers that can do that, though. You have to have a braking system that is really good.

The driver can't make mistakes, which is real easy to do there. Everything has to go your way.

Having said that, Martinsville requires patience -- and it goes both ways.

You have to be patient with other people and they need to have patience with you. You can't always just take and you don't always just give, either.

You can't slide up into people and run into them and then not expect it back.

Really, I think you have to go into a race at Martinsville trying to avoid contact. If you do that, then most of the time you aren't in it.

You making it happen in the first place causes most of the contact at Martinsville. If you can avoid it, people recognize that.

If you give respect, you get it back.