Jeff Burton
No. 31 Cingular Wireless Chevrolet
Event Preview Fact Sheet
Event/Date: USG Sheetrock 400 – July 9, 2006
Venue: Chicagoland Speedway – Joliet, Ill.
NOTES:
This Week’s Race Car at Chicagoland Speedway … Jeff Burton will race chassis No. 173 from the Richard Childress Racing (RCR) stable. This is the same Cingular Chevrolet Burton raced to a ninth-place finish at Pocono and to a sixth-place finish at Lowe’s Motor Speedway.
Points Check … Burton’s 15th-place finish at Daytona, the 11th straight top-15 finish for Team Cingular, dropped the 17-time NASCAR Cup Series race winner to seventh in the 2006 Championship point battle. However, Burton now sits just 50 points behind Tony Stewart in fifth and 82 points out of third.
Double Duty … In addition to his driving duties with the No. 31 Cingular Chevrolet at Chicago, Burton, a 21-time race winner in the NASCAR Busch Series, will race RCR’s No. 29 Holiday Inn Chevrolet in the USG Durock 300 Saturday, July 9. The race will air live on TNT beginning at 4 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time (EDT).
Testing, Testing … Following the race at Chicagoland Speedway, Burton and Team Cingular will head to Indianapolis Motor Speedway for a test session July 10-11 in preparation for the upcoming Brickyard 400 on August 6.
Meet the Driver … On behalf of sponsor Kraft Foods, Burton is scheduled to sign autographs at the Jewel Grocery Store located at 17117 South Harlem Ave., Tinley Park Ill., from 6-8 p.m. Thursday, July 6.
RCR at Chicago … Kevin Harvick scored back-to-back wins for RCR in the 2001-2002 Tropicana 400 at Chicagoland. Additionally, RCR owns two top-five and five top-10 finishes at the 1.5-mile suburban Chicago oval.
Up to Speed … The USG Sheetrock 400 at Chicagoland Speedway can be seen live Sunday, July 10 beginning at 3 p.m. EDT on TNT and heard live on the Motor Racing Network (MRN) and XM Satellite Radio. Qualifying for the 18th of 36 NASCAR Cup Series events will air live on SPEED Friday, July 8 at 4 p.m. EDT and will also be broadcast live on MRN and XM Satellite Radio.
JEFF BURTON QUOTES:
How has Chicago treated you in the past and how do you feel about going there?
"I'm excited about Chicago. We've worked really hard on our program this winter trying to make that program better. I feel like we've done that. I think we've made huge gains with the fast 1.5 mile tracks. Certainly Chicago is one of them. I look forward to it. I look forward to getting there and seeing if we can continue to run well at that kind of race track."
Is Chicago a cookie-cutter track?
"I do know that a lot of tracks look alike, hence the phrase ‘cookie’, cutter but they all drive totally different and Chicago is its own race track. There's no question it requires a different setup. It requires a different driving style than other race tracks that look like it. For us, even though they do look like cookie cutter tracks, they're really not."
You’ve had a lot of top-15 finishes this season. Obviously constancy is important but another key is running first through fifth. What makes you feel like you’re a championship team?
"I think if you go back and look at the races, if you go back and look at Charlotte, we had an honest legitimate chance to win. If you look at Dover, we had a legitimate chance to win. If you look at Pocono, we had a legitimate chance to win. We've put ourselves in position to win more races over the last two months than we had in the previous two months. At Richmond, we had a great chance to win and we had a problem. I think that we have been a team that's put ourselves in position and really we've had a lot of races where we've had finishes way worse than we deserved. We've had more of those than we've had of the other way around so if you watch one particular team, you understand more of what they're dealing with than if you just look at finishes. I honestly believe that if you look at the problems we had in comparison to the 17 (Kenseth), 48 (Johnson), 9 (Kahne), 8 (Earnhardt Jr.) and the 6 (Martin), we've had far more bad races than they've had yet we're behind them in points but not that that far behind. I think that all those things added up to give me a lot of confidence that we can succeed and that if we get ourselves in position we will be a threat."
