Weekend That Was: Texas

Last Sunday's Samsung 500 at Texas Motor Speedway came to a fitting conclusion on a day wrapped in interesting subplots and budding racetrack soap operas. The event was won by Jeff Burton, who passed Matt Kenseth on the last lap to wrest the checkered flag from his former Roush Racing teammate. It was the only lap led all day by Burton, and it was the only one that mattered.

That he passed Kenseth, his teammate at Roush for four full seasons and parts of two others until Burton departed for his current job at Richard Childress Racing with 14 races left in the 2004 season, was, in a way, quite ironic and underscored the fact that the powers-that-be fielding teams in the sport don't always get it right.

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Burton once was the darling of Roush Racing, winning races and competing for points championships with the regularity now associated with the likes of other bigger names in the sport. But by the middle of the 2004 season, it appeared that more Roush resources were being poured into the Kenseth race team than the car being driven then by Burton.

Looking back now, this should not be perceived as any great revelation. It has the perception of a pattern at Roush, where Burton was not the only veteran driver in recent years whose equipment seemed to become somewhat less of a priority when drivers perceived by the organization as younger, more marketable and more on top of their overall game were ushered into the picture -- and eventually shoved the veterans out altogether.

Mark Martin, who finished third in Texas and has enjoyed a revival this season in the No. 01 Chevrolet of Ginn Racing, was another who fits that very description.

It is easy to forget that while driving Fords for Roush from 1997 through 2001, Burton won 17 times. Only Jeff Gordon with 39 wins and Dale Jarrett with 20 visited Victory Lane more often than Burton during that span.

But even as Burton was winning four times in 2000, Kenseth was moving toward replacing him as top dog at Roush -- and another young gun in Kurt Busch was beginning to make his way there, too. By 2002, when Roush Racing sent four teams forth for the full 36-race schedule, Burton was the only driver who failed to post a single victory. Kenseth won five times that year, Busch four and Martin once. (Continued)