Burton knows his No. 31 RCR team needs to 'step up' in the Chase
Jeff Burton must be happy that NASCAR's Chase For The Sprint Cup starts at New Hampshire Motor Speedway.
After all, the Richard Childress Racing driver has generally performed well at that track. He finished 12th there earlier this season and has four wins, seven top-five and 12 top-10 finishes at the track. He has an average finish of 13.1 in 27 Cup races there.
So he's hoping this weekend's Sylvania 400 can spark his championship run and help him improve his seventh position in the standings.
Burton and his team have been working with the team's cars, trying to figure out how to pick up a little more speed. He thinks they've made improvements, but admits that the finishes don't necessarily reflect that.
Burton finished sixth at Richmond last week, his first top-10 since finishing ninth at Indianapolis six races prior to Richmond.
“There have been some races where we ran well but don’t have the finishes to show for it," he said. "We either got involved in a wreck or had penalties that put us back in the field. What I have to do as a driver is to objectively look at where we are versus the competition.
"We’re a step off of where we need to be in comparison to the very best car. Our results don’t indicate it and the results are the only thing that matters. I believe that we are better than we were six months ago or four months ago. What we have to do is step it up right now."
He says that in 2006, he and his team were at their best in the Chase. Burton was the points leader following races in that segment before Jimmie Johnson passed him and went on to win the title. Burton finished seventh, but is relying on that experience to help his group this time.
"We put ourselves in position to win and that’s what we have to do now," he said. "We have to perform a little better and we have to execute. We did a great job of executing the first half of the regular season. The last third of the regular season we haven’t executed. We actually ran better, with the exception of California, in the last six or seven races but we haven’t executed as well as we did early on in the season. Once we start executing again, then we have to improve a little bit on our speed.”
