Ward Burton will make his 331st NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series start when the green
flag drops for the Auto Club 500 at California Speedway.
BURTON ON CALIFORNIA... This race in California is important to this team in a
lot of ways. Both NetZero and Haas Automation are based in this area and both
will have a ton of people at the speedway watching us and cheering us on. We
want to run well wherever we go, but it would be really special for us to
have a great finish here in front of all of the people that allow us to race
every week. California Speedway is a first-class facility and it's a great
place to race and a great place for fans to go to enjoy a good race. The
track is wide and fast and has a couple of grooves, so if your car isn't
handling exactly the way you want it to, you can make some changes on track
to get the most out of the car until you can make it better. It's also a
strategy track sometimes since there aren't usually a ton of cautions and it
has turned into a fuel mileage track in the past. You'll depend on your fuel
mileage guy a lot more here than you will at a lot of other tracks."
ON THE POINTS RACE... "We took a hit in the points last week with the problem we
had with the engine and we need to do whatever it takes to make sure that
doesn't happen again. The further we get in the season, the harder it is to
rebound points-wise when things like that happen. It's especially important
now that we have this new points system in place. We can't let ourselves get
too far out of the hunt, we don't have as much time to make up for it as we
used to."
CALIFORNIA NOTES OF INTEREST
The Haas CNC Racing team has opted to utilize chassis 006 at California
Speedway this weekend. This is the first time this particular car has seen
action this season after running in both Dover races in 2003.
Ward Burton has made all seven starts on the 2.0-mile Fontana track. Burton
has two Top-10 finishes at the track. Burton qualified inside the Top 10
twice, once in 1998 and the second time in 2000, when he qualified fourth.
Following their disappointing 40th-place finish last week at Talladega
(Ala.) Superspeedway, Burton and the NetZero Racing team fell six spots in
the NASCAR NEXTEL Cup point standings and now holds down the 25th spot.
Burton and the team remain only 256 points outside of the Top 10.
Burton has a busy week heading into the event in Fontana. Burton will make
a sponsor appearance in Las Vegas Thursday before flying to the Los Angeles
area for the premiere of NASCAR Drivers: 360, the FX reality show Burton is
involved with. Saturday he will spend time with the folks from the FX show
DVD on TV filming segments to be included with the networks showing of
Diehard with a Vengeance.
Next week, Burton and the NetZero Racing team will spend two days testing
their Chevrolet at Richmond (Va.) International Raceway.
The eBay auction featuring articles from the NetZero/Ward Burton commercial
"Logos" continues through May 3rd. Many of the items in the auction were used
as props or wardrobe in the national television advertisement featuring
NASCAR NEXTEL Cup driver Ward Burton and many of the items have been
personally autographed by Burton. In addition, the auction includes a large
selection of hard to find, autographed Official NetZero HiSpeed Racing
merchandise. The auction runs from April 23rd (5 P.M Pacific) through May
3rd (5 P.M Pacific), 2004 and is featured at www.ebay.com/wardburton. All
items will come with letters of authenticity. All proceeds from the auction
will go to The Ward Burton Wildlife Foundation, a non-profit organization
that strives to protect and preserve the environment and all its wildlife.
