Jeff Burton
No. 31 Cingular Wireless Chevrolet
Event Preview Fact Sheet
Event/Date: SONY HD 500 – September 3, 2006
Venue: California Speedway – Fontana, Calif.
NOTES:
This Week’s Race Car at California 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, a runner-up effort at Chicagoland and sat on the pole at Michigan in August before a blown engine resulted in a 42nd-place finish.
Stat Facts … In 12 Cup starts at California Speedway, Burton has earned three top-five and four top-10 finishes. Entering the SONY HD 500, Team Cingular has posted four poles, four top-five and 14 top-10 finishes and sits seventh in the points.
California Driver … Jeff Burton isn’t the only member of Team Cingular with driving experience in California. Crew chief Scott Miller was behind the wheel on six occasions at the now-defunct Riverside International Raceway from 1981-1984, with a top finish of 14th at the nine-turn road course in Southern California. Miller raced in the NASCAR Winston West Series from 1983-1986 accumulating two poles, one win and six top-five finishes.
Testing, testing … Following Burton’s ninth-place finish at Bristol, Team Cingular traveled to the Milwaukee Mile August 28-29 for a test session in preparation for the upcoming short track races remaining on the schedule.
Up to Speed … The SONY HD 500 at California Speedway will be televised live on Sunday, Sept. 3 beginning at 7 p.m. Eastern Standard Time (EST) on NBC. The race will also be broadcast live on MRN and XM Satellite Radio. Qualifying for the 25th of 36 races on the 2006 NASCAR Cup Series tour begins Friday, Sept. 1 at 6:30 p.m. EST and will be broadcast live on SPEED, MRN and XM Satellite Radio.
JEFF BURTON QUOTES:
California’s fall race starts during the day and runs into the night. What type of changes will you see?
“California is a fairly slick race track. It’s not a track with a tremendous amount of grip. What will end up happening is you’ll slide around a little bit during the day and when it gets darker and the track cools down, there will be more grip. That will make your car a little bit tighter or it will make it drive a little better, depending on your situation. If you’re good during the day, it might hurt it and get too tight at night. But, if your set up isn’t so good during the day, it might transfer up and be really good at night.”
On California and Richmond, the final two races before The Chase …
"At California and Richmond earlier this season we ran very well. At Richmond we had a great chance to win the race and I got us on pit road too early. At California, we finished fifth and I know we ran well all day. I feel good about the race tracks we're going to and the team. But we've got to go make that happen and earn it. I like the tracks coming up but so does Kurt Busch and Kasey Kahne and Kyle Busch. There's nobody in The Chase hunt that you can look at and say they don't run good at those race tracks. Nobody. That's why there's a group at the top right now and they run good everywhere."
Last year you sat 19th in points heading into California so is it more fun racing now that you are in the top 10?
"It's great to be in the mix. The cool thing about all this is I love to race. It's great to have people say, ‘Oh golly, they had a bad week last week so now there's a lot of pressure on them.’ Pressure is when there is nothing good going on - when you're 25th in points with not a chance in hell of getting in The Chase. That's what pressure is. What we're doing is what we tried to do. That's added pressure on us because we want to fulfill our goals. We're close enough that we can see it. The kind of pressure we're under right now is good pressure. That's the way it's supposed to be. This is a performance-oriented business and if you're not producing and we're always looking as to why. Certainly the driver has a huge impact on whether the team can produce or not. So when a team is not producing, the driver is looked at and scrutinized, as he should be. I don't think The Chase really impacts that a great deal. I think The Chase puts more pressure on more people because at this point four years ago, there were three or four cars that could win a championship and at this point right now, there are about 12. More teams are feeling the heat. But that's a good thing.”
