Jeff Burton celebrates his Busch Series victory at Dover last month. Credit: Autostock

Busch Series needs a complete overhaul -- now

Burton feels bad for series owners, but not drivers

There's a reason David Gilliland is the story of the year in NASCAR. It's called Buschwhacking.

Jeff Gordon claims the reason Buschwhackers whack is simple: money.

	MARTY SMITH •   E-mail Marty •   Opinion Archive

Jeff Burton, conversely, says money is the very last reason to compete in Busch Series competition; scoffs at the notion, even.

Regardless your personal stance on the infiltration of the Busch Series by Nextel Cup teams and drivers, one thing is categorically certain: The series is on the brink of trouble and needs an overhaul.

It is truly Cup Lite. The entire concept has changed. It is less about driver development and more about information-gathering. Without some semblance of Nextel Cup affiliation, sustained excellence is impossible.

NASCAR has lost its grip on the series. Openly. Blame ultimately falls on them, but nonetheless it's tough to blame them.

The more Cup stars there are in the field, the more ticket stubs get ripped. Eighty thousand fannies in the grandstand on Saturday night at Lowe's Motor Speedway is glorious -- for NASCAR and for the track operators.

Can't blame the fans. If I'm taking my son to a race, the Busch Series race on a tandem weekend is the ticket: Same drivers for a third of the price with less time commitment. Home by bedtime. No-brainer.

Some folks point the finger at sponsors. That's unreasonable. If you're a CEO in the boardroom, putting $4 million on an established name is far more enticing than betting on a kid no one's heard of. It's guarantee vs. potential. It's six guaranteed appearances with Kevin Harvick or 16 with ... who?

But because of that very dynamic, the general consensus is that young drivers' opportunities have been drastically reduced.

Buschwhacking. It's the Catch-22 in NASCAR right now.

And the aforementioned politics have made fixing it a difficult prospect for NASCAR. They've let the Nextel Cup phenomenon advance far past gradual remedy. Again, an overhaul is necessary.

	Burton also won at Atlanta in March. Credit: Autostock
	Inside the Numbers A comparision of Cup regulars and Busch regulars in the Busch Series in 2006   Cup Busch Wins 16 2 Top-5s 78 15 Top-10s 128 51 Busch Series regulars are defined as drivers not currently competing full time in the Nextel Cup Series

Everyone and his granny has a quick-fix concept: limit the number of Cup drivers in the field; don't award points to full time Cup drivers that don't run the entire series; don't pay Cup-affiliated teams; run different car makes in Busch and Cup.

Burton, the garage's most candid voice-of-reason says it's time to toss the politics aside and determine a viable remedy. And it starts with money.

"In my eyes the Busch Series is too expensive -- it's just too expensive to be competitive," Burton said last Friday morning at Daytona International Speedway.

"If you're going to have continued success, you've got to have an engineering program, an aerodynamic program. You've got to have a lot of things you used to not have to have. And by the way, those things are real similar to what a Cup program needs. What that does is it allows the Cup teams to use engineering twice."

It's a rich-get-richer scenario. Where Cup owners can spread expense and resources out across a wide plane, non-Cup affiliated Busch owners are faced with considerably escalating costs.

In 1990, when Burton ran his first full Busch Series schedule, the cost was $220,000 for the entire year.

"That wasn't that long ago, and that's about what it takes for one race now," Burton said. "It's gotten out of hand. The cars don't cost that much more to build, but all the stuff you have to do to build a good car has."

Therefore, he says, it's time make the machines fundamentally different.

"More like radically different," Burton said. "That way the effort to use the Busch Series to enhance your Cup program is lessened. If the Busch cars were radically different we'd have less Cup involvement."

To start, bolt-on common bodies built from composites, crate engines and completely alternate tires.

"That's the first step to having more owners with a chance to compete," Burton said. "I think Cup involvement is good, but you can reach a point like where we are today -- it's too much (Cup involvement)."

The argument that young drivers' careers are limited doesn't fly with him, though. He has sympathy for non-affiliated Busch Series owners, but none whatsoever for drivers trying to break into the series.

"I have no sympathy for drivers' opportunities based on Cup involvement in the Busch program. I don't want to hear it," Burton said. "All you have to do is walk through the Cup garage and look at all the drivers that are here going through the Busch garage.

"I have sympathy for the Busch car owners. I have no sympathy for the Busch drivers, because that's how I did it.

"Now, having said that, because Cup involvement is required, if you can't drive with a team that has Cup involvement it's hard to show [talent]. I understand that, (but) when we're at what I believe to be an all-time high of young drivers in the Cup Series, I have a real hard time saying, 'Boy, I sure feel bad for young drivers at the moment.'"

Not that series penetration is easily achieved, mind you.

"It's a hard deal to get into, and gets increasingly harder," Burton said. "But Clint Bowyer got in. J.J. Yeley got in. Denny Hamlin got into it.

"The harsh reality of this sport is there's just not that many opportunities -- at the Busch level or the Cup level. That's just how it is."

There's a reason David Gilliland is the story of the year in NASCAR.

The opinions expressed are solely of the writer.