Golden Corral 500 - Ward Burton Notes

Ward Burton will make his 325th NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series start when the green flag drops for the Golden Corral 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway.

BURTON ON ATLANTA. "The best part about the Atlanta track is that if you can run on the top, then you can run on the bottom and vice versa. The flip side of that, of course, is that you have to have your car handling well to do either one of those things successfully. It's a handling track, just like so many of the other places we race, so we'll concentrate on our shock and spring package to start. These new tires are a big issue. Everybody can make them work for the first 10 laps, but it's the guys who can figure out how to make the most of them after those first 10 laps of the run that will have the obvious advantage. A lot of times in Atlanta we have long, green flag runs, so it will be important to spend the final couple of practices working on long runs. That said, you still need to qualify up front. We had to drop to the back last week in Las Vegas and we struggled to get back up to the front. One caution flag there in the beginning and then a single file restart and you're a half a lap back before you know it. It's hard to rebound from that, especially if you don't have a lot more cautions to close up the field. The guys at the shop have worked hard on this NetZero Chevrolet. It's one that they used a lot last year and had some pretty good results with it. Hopefully we can get there and be strong right of the truck."

ATLANTA NOTES OF INTEREST