Burton: Auto Club Speedway is in a difficult spot

By Lee Montgomery
Friday, February 29, 2008
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DAYTONA BEACH, FL - FEBRUARY 16: Jeff Burton, driver of the #31 AT&T Chevrolet, stands in the garage area during practice for the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Daytona 500 at Daytona International Speedway on February 16, 2008 in Daytona Beach, Florida. (Photo by Jason Smith/Getty Images for NASCAR)

Jason Smith
Getty Images

LAS VEGAS – Jeff Burton says NASCAR doesn’t need another restrictor-plate track, but he also has empathy for Auto Club Speedway’s problems as a 2-mile oval.
           
Officials from the California have pondered reconfiguration but wanted to see how NASCAR’s new car performed on the track.
           
Now that there’s been one race there with the new car, suggestions are pouring in, including one for it to be banked so much that NASCAR would need put restrictor plates on the cars.
           
“We don’t need another restrictor plate race track," Burton said Friday at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, which will host this weekend's UAW-Dodge 400 Sprint Cup race. "A 2-mile race track is a difficult thing. It really is. That was the trend, to build bigger race tracks.
       
"It boils down to simple mathematics. The faster you go, the bigger disparity in the field. It’s pretty simple. You go to Martinsville, run 92 mph and somebody’s off 2 mph. that percentage is different than the percentage than at California, where you run 200 mph.
   
"The 2-mile tracks are difficult. If they were going to do anything, the thing to do would be progressive banking, similar to what was done at Homestead. The problem is, it’s so big that it would be so freaking fast that you might have to put restrictor plates on it.”
   
Burton said the track shouldn’t be the second one on NASCAR’s schedule. He said the racing was good there this year, but coming off a restrictor-plate race, it would be better to go to a shorter race track that might have a little more action.
           
“One of the faults in our schedule is we present to the fan the Daytona 500, all the excitement, the two-wide [racing], the drafting, and then we take them to a 2-mile race track where you don’t have that,” Burton said. “I think we would be better to go to a track where more action happens.
   
“I am a fan of California, and I am a fan of Michigan. I wouldn’t be a fan of running those kinds of race tracks every week. Our sport is about diversity. The champion is able to run well at all different kinds of race tracks.”
   
As far as last week’s battle with the rain and the track, Burton said he was fine with NASCAR starting the race last week on Sunday afternoon.
           
But he said he and his fellow drivers didn’t complain enough that the track was worsening in California. There were two accidents before NASCAR stopped the race on lap 22 to fix weeping problems where water was coming up on the track surface.
           
“The track got worse as we ran, and that created issues,” Burton said. “I wish we could have found a way to  be on top of the track worsening and kind of stop the race before we had incidents. I thought when the race started, it was fine. I had no problems with starting the race at all. But it did get worse.
   
“We, as drivers, probably should have been complaining a lot more about it. That’s one thing that’s tough is when you have an issue like that. If you start complaining about it, then it’s hard to focus on just dealing with it. We, as drivers, probably needed to start complaining more about it, and maybe NASCAR could have reacted a little bit quicker. That’s always a tough spot because everybody has selfish reasons for complaining about debris, complaining about stuff on the race track needing a caution.”
   
Burton was not sure why it took NASCAR until about 10:55 p.m. California time to postpone the race until Monday.
           
“I didn’t completely understand why at 10:30 when the track had been weeping all day that we were still trying to run on Sunday night,” Burton said. “That didn’t make a lot of sense to me.
   
“But I know NASCAR had their reasons, and I never went to explore why we were doing it. It didn’t matter to me. They told me to be there, I had to be there.”
           
All in all, after such a rough weekend for the track, Burton said the dates NASCAR runs at California has made it tough for the speedway.

Currently, NASCAR races there in late February and then in the heat of Labor Day weekend.
   
“The race track has got a tough deal,” Burton said. “I think they’ve got two dates that make it more difficult for them than it could be. And I think there are other tracks that could benefit from having the dates that they have.
   
“That’s my opinion. Phoenix would be a good place. Here [at Vegas] would be a good place. I just think you could move some dates around and make gains at California and also make gains at some other race tracks. I’d do that before I’d change the race track.”

Mentioned Drivers: Jeff Burton

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2009 Sprint Cup Race for the Chase Standings

Driver Standings after the AMP Energy 500

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