Jeff Burton
No. 31 Cingular Wireless Chevrolet
Event Preview Fact Sheet
Event/Date: Bass Pro Shops 500 – October 29, 2006
Venue: Atlanta Motor Speedway – Hampton, Ga.
NOTES:
This Week’s Race Car Atlanta Motor Speedway … Jeff Burton will race Chassis No. 173 from the Richard Childress Racing (RCR) stable. Built new for 2006, this is the same Cingular Chevrolet Burton drove to a sixth-place finish in the Coca-Cola 600 at Lowe’s Motor Speedway, ninth-place finishes in both races at Pocono and a runner-up effort at Chicagoland Speedway. Burton sat on the pole at Michigan with this car in August before a blown engine resulted in a 42nd-place finish. This car finished 16th at California Speedway in September and most recently notched a third-place finish two weeks ago at Lowe’s Motor Speedway.
Stat Facts … In 24 starts at AMS, Burton boasts five top-five and 10 top-10 finishes. After starting third at the 1.5-mile track in March, a bad vibration forced Burton to pit road while he was running fourth with just six laps remaining, resulting in a 25th-place finish.
Burton Bouncing Back … Following a disappointing 42nd-place finish at Martinsville due to an expired engine, Jeff Burton fell from the top of the championship point standings, a spot he held for four straight weeks. Heading into Atlanta, the South Boston, Va., native sits in fifth, just 48 points behind leader Matt Kenseth with four races remaining in the season. Burton’s RCR teammate Kevin Harvick moved into second in the standings, just 38 markers out of the lead.
RCR at the ATL … In 90 races at Atlanta Motor Speedway (AMS) RCR has earned four poles and nine wins, including Kevin Harvick’s emotional victory in the Cracker Barrel 500 on March 11, 2001. Prior to that, Dale Earnhardt won eight times at the Hampton, Ga., track. Additionally, RCR boasts 23 top-five and 38 top-10 finishes at AMS. Childress, a former driver on NASCAR’s senior circuit, recorded his best finish at Atlanta with a ninth-place effort in the Atlanta Journal 500 on November 2, 1980.
Up to Speed … The Bass Pro Shops 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway will be televised live Sunday, October 29 beginning at 2:30 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on NBC and broadcast live on the Performance Racing Network (PRN) and XM Satellite Radio. Qualifying for the 33rd of 36 NASCAR Cup Series events will take the green flag at 7 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time Friday, Oct. 27 and will be telecast live on SPEED.
JEFF BURTON QUOTES:
Are you looking forward to going back to Atlanta?
“Atlanta is one of my favorite race tracks. It’s so much fun to race at Atlanta. It’s a track with two different personalities. It has a qualifying personality and a race personality. The racing personality is really slick. You can run on the bottom, up by the wall or in the middle of the track. It’s an extremely fast race track but in race trim you lose so much handling that it doesn’t feel that fast. In qualifying it’s really fast and it feels that way.”
Team Cingular tumbled in the points to fifth last week due to an engine failure. Do you think you can come back strong this weekend in Atlanta?
“Team Cingular is not out of this championship chase. I think we have as good of a shot as anybody to win the championship. We’ve run well enough to win a championship … we’ve just got to put the next four races together.”
