SEASON PREVIEW: Jeff Burton believes disappointing 2009 season will be catalyst for much better 2010 at RCR
Jeff Burton scored four top-10 finishes in his last four races of 2010.
// Archive, NASCAR Illustrated
Jeff Burton is the elder statesman at Richard Childress Racing with teammates Clint Bowyer,30, and Kevin Harvick, 34, still comfortably shy of age 40.
But at 42, Burton does not feel his relatively long-in-the-tooth status puts him at any competitive disadvantage.
“I believe that this sport has a whole lot more to do with the passion you have for it than it does the age you are,” Burton said during the recent Sprint Media Tour.
Age, as the saying goes, is just a number – and surely not the one Burton is concerned with most. That would probably be 17, which marked his finishing position last year in the Sprint Cup point standings.
Coincidentally, that’s also the number of years Burton has been racing in the series.
After missing the 2009 Chase For The Sprint Cup and going winless last season, Burton will look to revert back to his form from 2006-2008, when he made the Chase all three years and visited victory lane on four occasions.
Burton will be rejoined by veteran crew chief Todd Berrier, who took over for Scott Miller as part of an RCR reorganization last season. Berrier guided Burton to four top-10 finishes in the final four races, including consecutive runnerup finishes. That took away some of the sting from what was an otherwise largely disappointing season.
“I think that we learned a lot,” Burton said. “You hate to have to learn that way, but as long as you’re able to take something from it that can make you stronger, then you look at it as a lesson.
“I believe we will use last year as a motivating factor to be better. We’ll look back and say, ‘OK, we can’t let this happen.’”
If Burton does bounce back in 2010, he believes the reorganization will have been a catalyst for that positive development.
“I know the things that we’re doing now are a lot different from the things we were doing last year,” he said. “So that makes me feel good. We have heads of departments and we have departments that we never had before. We just have a much more solid plan.
“We’re acting on that plan and it feels better. If every department is pulling its weight, we will be highly successful.”
Burton is one of the most cerebral drivers in the garage, and known also for his honesty and accountability. No surprise then that he fully acknowledges his own role in getting the No. 31 Chevrolet back to where it needs to be.
“I have to do some things better,” he said. “That’s one of the reasons that I’m excited about working with Todd. He is the kind of guy who is going to tell me where I need to improve.
“We have to ask every segment of our race team to operate at the highest level. I know that we’re operating at a much higher level right now than we were …. I think that’s going to lead us into a much better 2010.”
THE BURTON FILE
- Best career finish: 1st (21 times, most recently at Charlotte, 2008)
- Career Cup top-10s: 222
- Laps led: 5,842
- Best track: Las Vegas (9.8 avg. fin.)
- Worst track: Watkins Glen (22.1 avg. fin.)
- Did You Know: Burton was named NASCAR Illustrated’s Person of the Year in 2007.
Coming Monday: Ryan Newman
