Jeff Burton, No. 31 AT&T Mobility Chevrolet
Dover media conference call transcript
Sept. 19, 2007, 10 a. m.
Gary Camp, Dover International Speedway: Race weekend will be here in just a few days. We have three races in three days. On Friday is the NASCAR Busch East Series race. It’s actually the season finale for that series, the Sunoco 150. Saturday is the Busch race, the RoadLoans.com 200. And then Sunday is the NASCAR NEXTEL Cup race, the Dodge Dealers 400. Sunny skies. 80 degrees. No rain - we’re due after a tough June!
Today we’re joined by Jeff Burton. He has started 27 races here in Dover. One win, six top-5’s, ten top-10’s. His most recent race at Dover, the Autism Speaks 400 in June, he started ninth and finished 12th. Let me start it off by asking what it’s been a year since the big win here in Dover, it ended a 175-race winless streak, talk a little bit about that and what it’s like coming back to Dover after that big win.
Jeff Burton, No. 31 AT&T Mobility Chevrolet: That certainly was a big win for us. To get back into victory lane there was really big. We won the Busch race there in the Spring and then to come back and win the Cup race in the Fall was really cool. I’ve always liked the race track and I’ve been in position to win there quite a few times and just never finished it off but I guess if we were every going to finish one off, that was the one to do it. It put us back on the map and it meant a great to me personally as well as my team.
Camp: I remember it was tough. We were all set in victory lane, and you pulled the car in and got out and the skies just opened up.
Burton: It was pouring down raining.
Camp: What a shame. What is it going to take to repeat that performance from last season? What do you need to do to repeat upon that?
Burton: If you watched the race there from the Spring with Truex and those guys really hitting it with the Car of Tomorrow, but to me, the first race there at Dover was the first real test of the Car of Tomorrow on a bigger, faster racetrack. I think we saw there what I think you’re going to see for a period of time is with this car, and that it’s so new, there will be a period of time where a lot of people are going to hit it. They’ll put a hurting on everybody, and that’s what they did. They did a great job and beat up on everybody, more or less, and just outran everybody. The key there is the same thing that it’s always been about - handling. It’s all about handling. Being able to run on the very body or being able to move the groove and put it where you want to put it, and that’s what he was able to do. He could run wherever he wanted to run. But that’s what our focus has been on. We’ve have not performed well in particular with the Car of Tomorrow, and we haven’t performed as well as we need to. We’ve put a tremendous amount of effort into it, but we just haven’t hit it. One of the things we’ve been working on is trying to find out what our teammates have been doing differently, and they’re having more success. I also think there are something’s that we’ve done that can help them. But with the Car of Tomorrow that’s kind of hard is that none of us have ever felt really, really great about it. We’ve all been kind of searching. We don’t have a baseline set up that we can fall back on so we’re working hard to develop that and I feel better going into this Dover race then I did in the Spring. I thought in practice we were the best car there and then when the race started we were off, and that’s something that we struggle with the Car of Tomorrow. It’s too thin of a razor blade and we need to find ourselves some cushion.
Q: Talk a little bit about qualifying here at Dover. Last year when you won the race you were 19th. Martin Truex Jr. started 26th and won the race in June. How important is qualifying here in Dover? Do you have enough time to work your way through the field?
Burton: Qualifying at Dover is one of the hardest places to qualify. I don’t know what it is but it’s very demanding and very difficult to hit two laps there and hit them well. Our qualifying setup at Dover is quite a bit different than our race setup and so when you qualify poorly there I don’t think that it’s sign that you’re going to race poorly. I think it’s just a sign that you didn’t do a good job qualifying. It is a concern but not that if you don’t do well you can’t race well. I have a history of not qualifying well, especially at Dover. It’s probably my worst qualifying race track, but I’m comfortable there. I enjoy racing there. But I don’t think there’s a whole lot of correlation between qualifying and racing.
Q: In your opinion, what is it going to take to win this year’s championship? Is it wins or consistent top-10’s?
Burton: If you look at the regular season, and look at what Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson were able to do, they were able to put, more so the No. 24 than the No. 48, I think, were able to put consistency together with high performance. It wouldn’t be a surprise for me to see one of these teams go through the ten race schedule without a catastrophic issue. Having said that, you’re going to have to perform at a high level. I think what won it last year was an average of like a 10.7 or 10.6 average finish, but Jimmie led seven or eight races and got a tremendous amount of bonus points. Plus this year, wins pay more than last year, so those numbers are a little bit skewed, but you’re going to have to finish an average of a ninth place finish, which sounds easy. But it’s exceptionally hard to do. We finished 18th last week, so for us to average a ninth, we’re going to have to win this week. We got to start getting that average down and on top of that, we need to lead laps. It’s going to take consistency, but it’s going to take speed.
Q: What do you remember about your first experience in Dover?
Burton: I just remember thinking how fast it was. The speed that you feel at Dover, it’s just a really high-speed racetrack. I came in there, I don’t remember what year it was, but my dad and I owned the car. We came there to race and I couldn’t believe how fast and narrow it was. The straightaways at that place are so narrow. It’s a fun race track, but it is a demanding race track. Just the speed and sensation of speed is something that always whenever I go there is really cool. Every time you go there is like going there for the first time again. The track changes a lot, it’s never the same, it’s just a real challenge.
Q: When you were first here it was still asphalt, correct?
Burton: Yes.
Q: This may be semi-humorous story, maybe not to you, but tell us the story about your monster trophy and your wife.
Burton: Yeah, it’s not funny to her. It’s kind of funny to me. But she decided that it needed to be somewhere else. She wanted to move it. Well of course I’m never home so she went to do it herself. For those of you that don’t know, the Dover trophy is pretty heavy. It’s not a light piece, and my wife weighs all of 95 pounds. So she decided to move it and tripped, and fell on top of it, breaking it into 60 pieces. She fell on top of it and when she did it broke her ribs. So it damaged her, destroyed the trophy, and it was quite a mess. It hurt her, it really did. So the monster bit her.
Q: Did you get a new one?
Burton: Yes, we got a new one. We broke the Dover trophy, the Southern 500 trophy and our Daytona one all in a matter of about two months from each other.
Q: Did she break all of them?
Burton: No. We remodeled our trophy room and put some new shelves in and I set the Darlington Southern 500 trophy on top of the Daytona one on a glass shelf. Well it didn’t like that. The glass shelf was cut too short and it fell through the pins and landed on top of the Daytona one. We went through about $10,000 in trophies pretty quick.
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