Jeff Burton
No. 31 Cingular Wireless Chevrolet
Event Preview Fact Sheet
Event/Date: Dodge Charger 500 – May 13, 2006
Venue: Darlington (SC) Raceway
NOTES:
This Week’s Race Car at Darlington Raceway … Jeff Burton will pilot chassis No. 164 from the Richard Childress Racing (RCR) stable. Built new for the 2006 season, Burton raced it at California (started sixth, finished fifth), Las Vegas (started eighth, finished seventh) Atlanta (started third, finished 32nd) and Texas (started 21st, finished sixth).
Stat Facts … In 23 Cup starts at Darlington Raceway, Burton has posted two wins, eight top-five and 10 top-10 finishes, with only one DNF (engine) and two finishes outside the top 20. In 22 Busch starts at Darlington, Burton has posted two poles, four wins, 10 top-fives, 14 top-10 finishes and only one DNF (engine).
Rain Man - Back-to-Back winner … Burton won both races at Darlington Raceway in 1999, leading both events as rain began to fall forcing NASCAR to throw the checkered flag prior to the scheduled distance.
One for Mom … In celebration for Mother’s Day, Meredith Bowman, mother of Team Cingular driver Jeff Burton, will join other drivers’ mothers as honorary grand marshals for the Dodge Charger 500 at Darlington Raceway. She will be escorted across the stage by her son at driver introductions then join the group of moms to give the starting command of “Sons and Gentleman, start your engines.”
TV personality … Move over Darrell Waltrip - here comes Jeff Burton. The Team Cingular driver will join FOX as a host for its Diamond Hill Plywood 200 Busch race pre-race show Friday, May 12 at 8 p.m. from Darlington Raceway.
Dear Diary … Throughout the Dodge Charger 500 race weekend at Darlington Raceway, Burton will be a guest columnist for the Florence (S.C.) Morning News. The two-time Darlington winner will give readers and inside look at his day-to-day activities from the track. His column will run Friday, Saturday and Monday and can be read in the sports section at www.scnow.com.
RCR at Darlington … Richard Childress is tied for third all time with Holman-Moody and the Wood Brothers for car owner victories at Darlington with eight - all of them coming with Dale Earnhardt. Additionally, Childress boasts 21 top-five and 29 top-10 finishes at the egg-shaped South Carolina oval with three different drivers including Earnhardt, Kevin Harvick and Robby Gordon.
Up to Speed …The Dodge Charger 500 at Darlington Raceway will be televised live Saturday, May 7 beginning at 6:30 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time on FOX and be broadcast live on the Motor Racing Network (MRN) and XM Satellite Radio. Qualifying for the 11th of 36 NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series events will air live on SPEED Friday, May 6 at 3:30 p.m. EDT and will also be broadcast live on MRN and XM Satellite Radio.
JEFF BURTON QUOTES:
We’re headed to Darlington this weekend, another one of your favorite tracks …
“I am a big fan of Darlington. It is so engrained in the history of our sport and is a big reason for where our sport is today. It was truly one of the first speedways. When you go to Darlington – and I don’t mean this in any disrespect, I mean it as a compliment – it’s like stepping back in time. It’s stepping back into what racing used to be in the previous era and I think it’s healthy for our sport to do that. To me, Darlington is a track where both the driver and the team have to be on their game and everything going well. There aren’t really any fluke winners at Darlington. It’s a huge honor to go there and race but also a big challenge. It’s certainly one of my most favorite weekends on the schedule.”
You’re a two-time winner at Darlington. How does that feel?
“I’ve been lucky enough to win the Southern 500 and win the 400. I’ve also won a bunch of Busch races at Darlington. We had a lot of races at Darlington we thought we deserved to win. We lead the most laps then seem to always mess up at the end. We would get beat with a bad pit stop or just not handle as good at the end of the race. Then we won two pretty quickly and in one of those we were wrecked. We wrecked in the rain. It started raining really hard and we wrecked pretty bad. It killed the car. We rode around under caution with two flat tires and a bent front snout just torn all to pieces. If it would have quit raining we would have never won that race. It kind of shows you when you think this sport isn’t fair, if you go back and look at your history, you probably had as many breaks in the good way as you did the bad. You just always remember the bad ones.”
When you look at footage of old races at Darlington versus the way you run in now, can you even imagine running back then?
“As tight as it is now, that’s nothing compared to how it used to be. If you go back and watch some of the old races and see how narrow the groove really was back then its amazing. It was a one-lane race track. Today it’s a lane-and-a-half, maybe even two lanes in some places. We have a great big wide race track compared to what they had back in the day. The interesting thing is the track is designed to run about half the speed we run on it. Our cars are going so fast anymore. They just make so much downforce and our engineers and crew chiefs have done such a good job of getting so much out of these cars that they exceed the limit of what the race track was designed. The soft walls have made the track narrow again. Darlington is a very demanding race track and the new technology has made it even more demanding.”
Are you disappointed we only go there once a year now?
“I am disappointed. I wish this race was the Southern 500. I wish they still called it the Southern 500. I think it’s important to the history of our sport. I look forward to the day that the race sponsor goes back to name it the ‘Southern 500 presented by….’, that would be a special thing. I wished we raced there on Labor Day weekend like we used to, when it was hot. That was truly the Southern 500. I do understand and respect what our sport is up against. In trying to branch our sport out and expose it to more people, we need to do that in areas that more people can come to. Unfortunately, the Darlington/Florence area hasn’t been able to keep up with lodging, restaurants, those type of things the way a Chicago or Texas has been able to. It’s the nature of the beast that we’re up against right now. I don’t want to be part of the sport with no Darlington date on the schedule. One race certainly isn’t as good as two but one race is a heck of a lot better than none.”
