Jeff Burton
No. 31 Cingular Wireless Chevrolet
Event Preview Fact Sheet
Event/Date: Pennsylvania 500 – July 23, 2006
Venue: Pocono Raceway – Long Pond, Pa.
NOTES:
This Week’s Race Car at Pocono Raceway … Jeff Burton will race chassis No. 173 from the Richard Childress Racing (RCR) stable. Built new for 2006, this is the same car Burton drove to a sixth-place finish in the Coca-Cola 600 at Lowe’s Motor Speedway, finished ninth in Pocono and then went on to finish second at Chicagoland.
Stat Facts … In 25 starts at Pocono, Burton has posted six top-five and12 top-10 finishes.
Points Climb … Following his seventh-place finish at New Hampshire International Speedway, Team Cingular driver Jeff Burton moved up one position and currently sits third in the NASCAR Cup Series point standings. The finish also marked the 13th consecutive top-15 finish for Team Cingular, dating back to Texas in April when Burton sat 21st in points. It is their 12th top-10 finish of the 2006 season, already doubling their top-10 finishes from last season.
Sports Illustrated ‘Wheel Man’ … Team Cingular driver Jeff Burton is featured in the July 17 issue of Sports Illustrated. The 39-year old driver of the No. 31 Chevy is the focus of a pictorial piece highlighting the details of his workout routine. Last fall, Burton began a workout regimen with Carolina Panthers martial arts instructor Ken Nazematz which focuses on developing both sides of the body symmetrically, hand-eye and foot-eye coordination and reaction time.
RCR at Pocono … RCR has two wins at Pocono, both of them coming with Dale Earnhardt. Earnhardt won the Summer 500 on July 19, 1987 and the Miller Genuine Draft 500 on July 18, 1993. Additionally, RCR has earned one pole, nine top-five and 33 top-10 finishes at the three-turn speedway. Richard Childress, a former driver in NASCAR’s top division, contributed two of those top 10s from 1976-1980.
Charity Walk … Team Cingular driver Jeff Burton will join Ernie Irvan in his LAPS walk at Pocono Raceway Friday, July 21, following NASCAR Cup Series qualifying. The event allows participants to walk the racetrack alongside Irvan and other current and former NASCAR drivers to raise awareness and funding for Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) prevention and treatment. For additional information please visit www.lapswalk.org.
Up to Speed … The Pennsylvania 500 at Pocono Raceway will be televised live, Sunday, July 23 beginning at 1:30 p.m. Easter Daylight Time (EDT) on TNT and will be broadcast live on the Motor Racing Network (MRN) and XM Satellite Radio. Qualifying for the 20th of 36 NASCAR Cup Series races is scheduled for Friday, July 21 at 3:30 p.m. EDT.
JEFF BURTON QUOTES:
What are the differences between the three turns at Pocono?
“Turn one, you have to be careful not to get in too far. If you do, you tend not to be able to get in the groove you want to be in. You need to accelerate through the middle as quickly as you can. There’s a big bump in the middle of turn one that causes some big problems, so you need to be able to run around that or have a good package that you can run through it. The Tunnel Turn is a very aggressive turn. You drive in there really, really deep and get back on the throttle really, really quick. It’s very aggressive. Turn three is a long, sweeping corner that if you’re not careful, you can over drive it and get your car messed up. It’s three totally different mindsets for three totally different corners.”
Last season at this point Team Cingular was XX in points … now you sit in third. Not just the 31 team but RCR as a whole has shown so much improvement this year … what's been the biggest difference this year?
“Well, it's not one thing. Our cars are faster. When they hit the lift gate going into the trailer, they're better cars. They're aerodynamically better, they're chassis-wise better, the engines that are bolted in them are better.
We have revisited and rebuilt every part of our program, everything from marketing and merchandising to shock expertise and chassis and bodies. For the most part, we've seen improvements in every area.
Without a doubt, with our team in particular, Scott Miller has come in and done a phenomenal job. He's really stepped up the level of intensity within our team, demanding that we strive for excellence. But we have faster cars and you can't discount that. When you have 16th-place cars, you finish 11th and you think you've done a really good job and everybody else thinks you suck. That's just how it is. You leave the race track feeling like you got all there was but you finished 15th or 14th or 20th, and you just can't get anything done. This year our cars have been faster and it's enabled us to do things that we couldn't do last year, and it's just better. You've got to be able to go fast. I mean, that's the basics of racing obviously. When you go fast, you find things other areas to concentrate on. Your pit stops are off, you need to get on pit road better, you find all these little things you need to work on, but until you go fast, you have no idea what things you need to work on, the ancillary things.”
