CONCORD, N.C. -- Two years ago, Jeff Burton left Lowe's Motor Speedway with a 45-point Chase lead and so much staying power that one competitor called him "the Iceman." One blown engine the next week at Martinsville changed everything, and suddenly the Richard Childress Racing driver was just another spectator watching Jimmie Johnson march to his long-awaited first Cup crown.

Now, Burton leaves the Charlotte racetrack under very different circumstances. He's the hunter rather than the hunted, down 69 points to Johnson with five races remaining in the season. But he's riding the momentum of a race victory Saturday night that boosted him to second place in the standings, and playing with house money as a driver who's not supposed to win it all.

"We're just having fun," he said after winning the Bank of America 500, his second victory this season. "We're paying attention to us. We're not going to get caught up in the point thing. We're paying attention to it, but we're not going to get caught up in it. If we don't win the championship, our year's not a failure. We weren't one of the teams that set the bar up there. We're just laying it out there, having a good time. Whatever happens, we look at each other at the end of the race, we all know we put a lot of effort into it. If we don't do well, we'll go back and try to do better next time. That's how we're going to approach it. That's how we've done it up to this point. That's how we're going to do it till the end of it."

And why not? In Burton's mind all the pressure is on drivers like Johnson, who remained atop the standings after Saturday's event, and Carl Edwards, who fell two places to fourth after suffering an electrical problem that left him 17 laps off the pace. Celebrating in Victory Lane, Burton remarked that almost everyone else in the title hunt has a tremendous amount to lose -- except him, the 41-year-old who's always up front but who can't seem to win enough races to close the deal.

"We've come into this thing very relaxed, committed to having a good time, committed to having fun," said Burton, who's finished no worse than ninth in each of the first five Chase events. "We may have gotten a little too tight [in 2006] because, you know, we'd never done it before. I didn't think we were last year, but we got off to a slow start. This year we just said, 'You know what, we're going to go, have a good time, race hard, we're going to do the best we can, and it will be what it will be.' (Continued)