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Born: South Boston, Va. Resides: Cornelius, N.C. Family: Burton and his wife, Kim, have two children, Paige and Harrison. Team: Richard Childress Racing Car: Chevrolet Sponsor: Cingular Car owner: Richard Childress Crew chief: |
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Burton gives Chevrolet its sixth '07 victory
DAVID POOLE, dpoole@charlotteobserver.com
Sunday, Apr. 15, 2007
FORT WORTH, Texas – For a few moments, at least, Jeff Burton felt 10 years younger after winning the Samsung 500 at Texas Motor Speedway.
“I feel like I did then,” Burton said, recalling his first career victory in this 1.5-mile track’s first Nextel Cup race in 1997. “With the opportunity I have here, I feel like I can do that again.”
No driver had won twice at Texas Motor Speedway, but after a day filled with plot twists it was clear in the final laps that streak would end Sunday as Burton chased down Matt Kenseth.
Kenseth and Burton had both won at Texas driving for Roush Racing, and Kenseth’s still with that team. Burton, however, moved to Richard Childress Racing after the 2004 season and is enjoying a career rebirth.
When he won for the first time in nearly five seasons at Dover in September, he fought door-to-door for several laps with Kenseth late in that race. On this sunny afternoon in north Texas, it came down to those two again.
Kenseth had taken the lead on Lap 318 by passing Jeff Gordon, who led 173 laps at a track where he’s never won before a brush with the Turn 4 wall on Lap 311 slowed his car enough to let Kenseth zoom by.
Kenseth, however, was not thrilled with the way his No. 17 Ford was handling, either. He’d been running around in the bottom groove, but suddenly his car got exceptionally loose and he knew that Burton was closing fast.
“That tightened the car up and I held him off for as long as I could,” Kenseth said.
Burton passed Gordon for second with 15 laps to go and drew a bead on the leader. He entered each turn in the low groove and wanted to drift up toward the middle of the track as he exited the corner.
That, however, was precisely where Kenseth was running.
“Matt’s really good,” Burton said. “He did a great job of putting his car in a position where he could get the most speed out of it. He wasn’t where I wanted to be, but it prevented me from being where I wanted to be on the exit of the corner.
“He found a way to be faster when he needed to be and he found a way to keep me from being as fast as I could be. That’s what you do when you’re leading a race with 15 laps to go.”
Finally, Burton got a good run off Turn 4 as the leaders came to the white flag. He buried the car into the low groove entering Turn 1 for the final time, and when he came off Turn 2 the rear of his No. 31 Chevrolet was clear of Kenseth’s Ford.
Burton led only one lap, but it was the one that counted and gave him his 19th career victory.
Two races ago at Bristol, Burton went into the final turn in a green-white-checkered finish on the inside of Kyle Busch’s Chevrolet. Burton raced Busch clean, finishing second by less than a car-length, and took some heat for not being more aggressive.
Again this time, he kept it clean with Kenseth.
“I am who I am,” Burton said. “…Winning a race because you knock somebody out of the way doesn’t mean you were better. It just means…you were just willing to give away some integrity to get a trophy. That’s not what I am about and it’s not what this team is about. We’re going to do it the right way. Right, wrong or indifferent, that’s who I am.”
Gordon started from the pole and led all but seven of the first 153 laps. Dale Earnhardt Jr. then took command, leading 93 laps until he got passed by Kurt Busch. Just after that, Earnhardt Jr. got hit from behind by Kyle Busch as Earnhardt Jr. slowed to avoid a Tony Stewart spin.
Kurt Busch made a pit stop under green on Lap 291, but a caution one lap later caught him and left Gordon back in the lead for a restart on Lap 297 with Mark Martin, Kenseth and Burton behind him. “It was a stupid mistake,” Gordon said of his late brush with the wall. “I feel that I gave one away. Coming off Turn 4 it kind of took off and started pushing on me.”
Martin, back from a two-race hiatus, finished third with Gordon fourth. Jamie McMurray edged Roush teammate Greg Biffle for fifth at the checkered flag.