ON BEING A PART OF SO MANY CLOSE FINISHES
Jeff Burton: “The thing I love most about our sport is the competition. I ve said before that I don t like sitting in a 140-degree car for four hours. That s not why I do it. Believe it or not I don t do it because for the money I make. I do it because I love to compete. This is one thing I can compete at at a high level. That s what our sport is about. It s what your team has done against everyone else. When it s 30 to go or 40 to go - that s when it counts, that s when it ll pay you the points and pay you the money and get the trophy. That to me is what wakes me up in the morning, is finding a way to do it better than the competition. At some point the rubber has to hit the road and that s results. The results come when you re on the last lap. I love being part of close finishes and I ve been lucky, I ve been part of a lot of really close finishes. I haven t always won them, I can promise you that. it s really fun, it s invigorating. To beat Matt Kenseth, to find a way to beat that #17 team on the last lap, I m telling you, you guys don t understand how much that means. Because that s a great race team. He s a great race driver. To find a way around that, it means an incredible amount.
ON NOT MOVING PEOPLE OUT OF THE WAY TO WIN:
Jeff Burton: “I am who I am. I ve received some criticism after Bristol for not being more aggressive. And that s okay, I m good with that. The fact that people have different opinions is what makes this sport work. But at the end of the day, I am who I am, I race the way I race. I think I ve received more back from other drivers because I ve been courteous to them. Matt Kenseth would have driven me that way too. That s the deal. To be perfectly honest, winning a race because you knock someone out of the way, didn t mean you were better. It just meant you were willing to give something away in an attempt to get the win. If you want to do that, that s fine. But when I wake up in the morning, I want to know that we won the race. I want to call Scott Miller and Richard Childress and say we won the race. Knocking someone out of the way is a little bit of pleasure for about two minutes. But you didn t win the race. You just give up some integrity to win a trophy. That s not what I m about and that s not what this team is about. We re going to do it the right way, we re going to win races with credibility. Right, wrong or indifferent, that s who I am.
WERE YOU HOLDING BACK?
Jeff Burton: “As soon as I got to him I was trying to pass him. I ll be perfectly honest with you, why we passed him when we did, I have no idea. I did the same thing I d done every other lap, but for some reason my car stuck and his didn t. I don t know why that is. The only thing I did different was that I entered the corner a little bit closer to him because I d got a good run off four. If you look at the lap times, I didn t run faster on the next-to-last lap. I think he run slower. His car was starting to deteriorate. because I didn t change what I was doing. Anything else I tried to do caused a slower lap time. I did what was working. Today was one of those days where you didn t win by brute force, you won with a methodical approach. That s what it took to be successful. That s what I did on the last lap and that s what I did 15 laps from the end. “
EARLIER IN THE WEEK, YOU SAID THE TROPHY MEANT MORE THAN THE CHECK. HAS THAT CHANGED?
Jeff Burton: “The check is cool after the fact but there s nothing bigger than that trophy. You ve got to pay the bills eventually but that trophy is what wakes you up in the morning. “
HOW WOULD YOU DEFINE THE RACE TODAY?
Jeff Burton: “You never knew what was going to happen. It was like a soap opera. It was just incredible, all the things. you just never knew. But I ve never seen a boring race. I ve seen races that are more exciting than others, obviously. What the hell can be boring about cars going around 200 mph, 43 of them, on a race track? What can possibly be boring about that? There s certainly some races that are better than others. You don t get many races like what you had today. Nor does every basketball game get triple overtime. That s the way sports are. What really kills me is when they say racing used to be better. Anybody that says that never watched racing. Maybe you believed it because a marketing campaign made you believe it but anybody that watched racing 20 years ago and watches it today. there s no comparison. I ve never seen a boring race. “
HAS THIS SEASON GONE ABOUT AS WELL AS YOU COULD HAVE HOPED?
Jeff Burton: “It s the best I ve ever gotten off to a start. I m sure Richard has gotten off to a better start with (Dale) Earnhardt, (Sr. ). I can t ever imagine not leading the points (laughs). Honestly, we ve done a great job of putting ourselves in a position to win races. We haven t led as many laps as we d like to lead; we need a little more speed. But I can t imagine getting off to a better start. There are areas that we ve got to be better in but from a finish standpoint and a consistency standpoint, it s consistently finishing in the top six. That s really hard to do. We ve found a way to do that; the No. 24 has found a way to be a little better. If you were to tell me we were going to get off to this kind of start I would have certainly taken it and I would have expected us to run well but you can t count on streaks like this very often. ”
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