Having a good time with Jeff Burton

While many drivers live for the intensity of the Chase, Jeff Burton looks at the final 10 races differently.

“This is the most fun 10 weeks of the year,” Burton said. “This is what you live for. Every time I get in the Chase, I tell myself I waited my whole life to be in this position, so that’s a hell of a cool thing.”

Burton feels many drivers get caught up in the intensity of the Chase.

“We tend to get caught up in the pressure of it,” he said. “But man, we’re playing a game and it’s supposed to be fun.”

But that does not mean Burton should be taken lightly when the Chase gets under way.

“My deal is that I’m going to go race as hard as I know how to race,” he said. “I’m going to ask my team to work as hard as they know how to work. We’re going to work together and try to defeat problems, but we’re going to have fun with it.”

One Devil of an answer

After Jimmie Johnson has won four consecutive Sprint Cup titles, some wonder if he is vulnerable to being knocked from his crown this season.

Jeff Burton things so.

“They are vulnerable as everybody is vulnerable,” Burton said. “There is no team in any situation that is not vulnerable. Tiger Woods is vulnerable; the Lakers are vulnerable; The Yankees are vulnerable; everybody is-”

But Burton quickly amended his answer, “-Duke’s not- but everybody else is.”

Peak a BOO for Stewart

Driver Tony Stewart picked up his first win of the season last week at Atlanta, one race shy of the beginning of the Chase. But don’t ask Stewart if he is peaking at the right time.

“The phrase of peaking at the right time is the dumbest phrase I’ve ever heard anybody say,” Stewart admonished reporters. “So if any of you guys use it you’re idiots because there’s not such thing as a peak. This is a sport the technology never stops so how can you peak when the next week what you have isn’t the same as what you need. There’s no such thing as peaking at the right time there’s only momentum. Even if you don’t have momentum going into the Chase that doesn’t mean that at Loudon somebody can get on a roll.”

It’s called teamwork

With Stewart’s ire already raised, perhaps it wasn’t a good idea to ask if he would use information from teammate Ryan Newman to help him in the Chase.

“What do you think we’ve been doing all the way to this point?” he asked. “Why do you think we have multi-car teams? Come on, get caught up, get in the game here. That’s why you build multi-car teams so they can share information and learn from each other. You’re going into ground that’s been covered since Joe Gibbs and Rick Hendrick started multi-car teams 15-20 years ago. This is nothing new.”

Entering the Big Unknown

Every driver has points of uncertainty, consternation…an unknown that they must contend with in their preparations to come out on top in the Sprint Cup Chase. 

“For me the big unknown is Charlotte,” said Carl Edwards.  “Obviously, Talladega, Martinsville, those are going to be one and two on the bottleneck.  Those are going to be races you have to make it through.  But, for our team, I think it’s Charlotte.  We’ve run really well there; and we’ve run really terribly there.” 

As his team approaches this arena of ambiguity and duplicity, Edwards wish is for good information from his teammates. 

“As a group, I hope we can go there and figure that place out and have a good race there.  But I feel the way we’ve run at Dover; the way Kasey (Kahne) and A.J. (Allmendinger) ran it in Hampshire.  The way our mile and a half program has been…I think we’re set to run it really well.

“It’s just Charlotte,” Edwards said. “Even though it’s a mile and a half, it’s just different.”