Jeff Burton is fourth in the Nextel Cup point standings, 324 behind leader Jimmie Johnson. Credit: Autostock

Q&A: Jeff Burton

Jeff Burton was a guest of the media during this week's Nextel Cup test session at Indianapolis Motor Speedway:

New Hampshire is the only race that's in the Race to the Chase, in the ten races that lead up to the Chase that began with the Pepsi 400 at Daytona, and of course the Chase to the NASCAR Nextel Cup Series. It's the first race of the Chase, how important is this Sunday's event?

Burton: I think it's real important. Matter of fact I think all of the next eight races are exceptionally important. If you look at the points from 3rd to 12th, they are really tight. I think certainly the first two guys, Jimmie and Matt, their teams, they are looking at this as the first of two races, and obviously the first one of the last ten, and they can learn a lot in this first race to apply to the second race.

Stats at a Glance Jeff Burton's 2006 stats Race St. Fin. Laps Status Daytona 1 32 202 running Fontana 6 5 251 running Las Vegas 8 7 270 running Atlanta 3 25 324 running Bristol 18 34 467 running Martinsville 20 33 426 running Texas 21 6 334 running Phoenix 37 9 312 running Talladega 40 4 188 running Richmond 15 15 399 running Darlington 20 9 367 running Lowe's 11 6 400 running Dover 17 4 400 running Pocono 5 9 200 running Michigan 12 11 129 running Infineon 13 7 110 running Daytona 39 15 160 running Chicago 1 2 270 running

The rest of us are looking at this as this race and this race only and then when the race is over, we'll look at it and say what can we learn for next one. If you're the 17 or 48, you want to experiment just a little better and they are to be in a position to do that. The rest of us are fighting real hard to make sure we get into the Chase.

How important is this week's testing at Indianapolis?

Burton: Indy is such a big race. Our series is really weird in the world of sports. We have a really, really big race the first race of the year and halfway through or roughly halfway through we run the Brickyard. It's cool to go to the Brickyard. If you don't respect what's going on at Indy you're not much of a race fan. It's just so much history there.

It is interesting, however, I think, that we test there, being that the track is so different from everywhere else that we run, the information that we gain at Indy is pretty much not usable at other racetracks. So it is interesting that we test there. But I think it shows the importance of the race and how much prestige the race has brought on throughout the years.

As recently as a year ago, car owners in the NASCAR Nextel Cup Series wanted to sign the next great 18 year old driver that came along. Today, though, it appears there's been a significant ship to hire veteran drivers. Bill Elliott is considering a full time schedule in 2007 and your brother, Ward, possibly may be coming out of retirement. What's changed for these car owners to now covet the more mature drivers?

Burton: Well, we've gone through a period and we've gone through this before, if you go back and look at the Busch Series and, you know, we have taken all of the 100 percent -- you definitely believe this guy can get it done, people in the Busch Series. If you look at David Gilliland, he won a Busch race and everybody, you know, got -- about him and rightfully so. But a lot of the Busch drivers have taken away from the series already so it's going to take a while to regroup.

The Busch guys that are there now, are very young in the Busch Series. And so this happens every four or five years where you end up with kind of a shortage of "the next great guy" that people are willing to take a gamble on. Now I'm not saying there's not people in the Busch Series right now that won't be next great guy, but I'm just saying it's not obvious. So people are looking at other opportunities, because there is a driver shortage.

So we have a situation where next year, which I think poses major problems for our sport, we have too many teams, and we don't have enough crew chiefs, we don't have enough engineers, we don't have enough drivers. There's a severe work shortage or work people shortage. And that goes into the driver thing, as well.

So older drivers that have experience and wins and those kind of things, you know, look really good right now. And there's also been -- there's also been the understanding that there's no sure bet. That's young drivers that have come into the sport that people thought would go out and win a bunch of races and they didn't.

There's young guys that have come in and not conducted themselves in the right way and sponsors have not been proud of that. A lot has added up to people looking at guys that have proven they can do it. I actually think it's amazing to me -- wouldn't just die to get Bill Elliott or Ward Burton or Ricky Rudd. Those are the kind of things that have surprised me over the last couple of years.

Q. Can you talk about your feelings about all of the driver movement so early on in the season? It used to be mostly at the end; now it seems to be almost from the beginning. Do you have any particular thoughts on that?

Burton: It gets earlier every year. I think the reason why is just it takes so long to get stuff in this action today. If you look at marketing plans from sponsors and getting ready with the team, I just think it takes forever to get stuff to happen today. And people are itching. I think if you look at next year, you look at all of the stuff that's going on, car owners getting sponsors, getting anxious, and they want to know right now what's going to happen.

It's moved stuff along; I think it's moved it along too early in the year. It takes away -- I think it hurts our sponsors when drivers are talking about leaving in March, April, May. I think it hurts our sponsors and them being able to market their product as well as they would otherwise. But, it's the nature of the business now. I don't think it's a positive, but I think it's a necessity based on the fact just to build a marketing plan, get everything lined up, all that stuff takes so much time.

Can you talk about the upcoming off weekend? First of all, do you think it's a good time of year to have one, or would you rather maybe see one a little bit closer to the Chase, and what are your plans for the off weekend?

Burton: You know, we've run a lot of races consecutively. I wish we actually in a perfect world we spread those weekends out where we run two races, have a weekend off, run two races again, have a weekend off and then run 18 or whatever it is and have a weekend off. I'd rather see us run eight get a weekend off, run another eight, get a weekend off, and I'd like to see them spread it out a little more.

It is what it is. I think that basically whatever -- whatever they tell us the schedule is, we build our programs according to that. Other than everybody being tired this time of year; it starts to get hot, you get tired and those kind of things. The weekend off works pretty well, because everybody is dragging just a little bit. But as far as what I'm doing Monday after, we have been testing a tremendous amount so we are going to take some time off, give our team members some time off.

We've been building a lot of new cars, we've been testing a lot, we've been Car of Tomorrow testing and we've really been hitting hard in preparation to make the Chase and hopefully get into it and hopefully try to make a run for the championship. We do a lot of testing so we can go into a mode getting ready for that part of the year.

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So we're going to be able to give our guys some time off. I'm actually going to take ten days and I'm just going away, and I'm not going to do anything with racing. I'm just going to step away from it and take ten whole days off, and then when I come back, I'll be 100 percent.

Your team is having a great season and you've been one of the surprises this year right out of the box in Daytona. What's been the big difference this season over last year, and are there any races coming up that your team is really targeting?

Burton: Well, I think as far as with a we're Targeting, our next eight races we're targeting. We're one at a time kind of a team. We focus on what we're doing right now today, and that's pretty much what we focus on. You know, tomorrow at Indy we'll be there, focus on how to win Indy. And when we get to New Hampshire, we'll focus on how to win New Hampshire.

We take it one race at a time and that's what we'll continue to do. That's one of the reasons we're better. Our company is stronger. Our support systems back at the shop from an aerodynamic standpoint, from an engine standpoint, from an engineering standpoint, from a preparation standpoint, we've stepped it up in every category. We have reorganized, rebuilt, restructured everything. And most of those things are working better than they were.

Scott Miller has come to our team and has been a tremendous asset for our team as well as the whole company. He's done an incredible job, and you know, there's been a lot of things, it's not one reason that we're better. And by the way, we need to be better yet. We're still not where we need to be. We haven't been winning races. We're not leading the points. There's people that are doing better than us. We've got to step it up.

We're having a good year, but we're not where we want to be. If we want to be good, that's where we are, but we're striving for excellence. We're striving for greatness. You have a limited time to do this. I think we have the resources. I think we have the people. I think we have the drive and the commitment to get it done. But we're not getting it done.

We're not competing at the highest level. We are competing at a high level, but we are not competing at the highest level. And in this sport, if you're going to have continued success, you've got to compete at the highest level because the bad days drag you down in the points and they drag you down in a lot of ways, and you've got to be strong to be bigger than that. That's what we're striving for.

You look at the 20 car, that's a great example of that. Look at the 16 car, great example of that. They are great race teams that have proven to be able to contend for championships, but things don't always go right. And the better you are, the better you can recover from those things.

You've had a lot of success in New Hampshire, is there anything you can take from that or has the track changed too much at this point?

Jeff Burton chats with owner Richard Childress. Credit: Autostock

Burton: The track has changed a tremendous amount. And the sport, the way you have success in New Hampshire is totally different than what it used to be. Biggest thing about New Hampshire is you used to be able to turn the car pretty decent around the corner and get good rear grip off the corner, you could have a lot of success. Today, you've got to fly through the middle of the corner and you've got to fly on exit. It's just unbelievable how different it is. It's so much faster than it used to be as far as the corner speed.

So the way you win there is quite a bit different, and the way you've got to have your car handle is quite a bit different. And the sport has changed, track has changed a lot, certainly. I actually like the old racetrack better. But it's changed so much, that without a doubt, there's not a whole lot that you can take from the races before.

What do you think about Jeff Gordon spinning Matt Kenseth at Chicago, as opposed to doing it at Bristol?

Burton: I think that, No. 1, I don't agree with spinning people out, period. I don't agree in paybacks, period. I think at the end of the day, we ought to race hard and go after it and go try to get the position and through that, things happen all by themselves that they wish had not happened. I just don't think we need to be knocking people backwards.

Whether it's at Bristol or Chicago or Martinsville, we really need -- one of the hardest hits I've ever had was in Martinsville. I was hit at New Hampshire one time hard enough where I didn't know if I was going to race on Sunday in a practice run. So you can get hurt anywhere, and I think we really need -- we really need to respect -- we need to race hard but respect each other.