JEFF BURTON QUOTES:

You’re taking chassis No. 164 - your ‘no dent, no scratch’ car to Texas. Why is it so good?
“Well, we certainly can not revolve our entire company around one car, but it’s the car we’ve run the most and we’re the most comfortable with and know the most about. Until we can go to Charlotte and do some additional testing, it’s hard to go against that car. We have cars that, in the wind tunnel, actually look a little bit better than 164, but we’re comfortable with it and its run well everywhere we’ve been with it so we are going to keep taking it until we find something that is better. With the new testing schedule, it’s hard to find something better. The way it is working out we will take it to Texas, then the next big track will be the Charlotte test. We’ll have to decide whether to take 164 and another car, or to take two others cars – which we’ll probably end up doing to determine what to take there for the race. We can’t run one car on every mile-and-a-half and two-mile race track, we have to have more cars than that. Really, we need to be improving it. It’s a good car, but it needs to be better. We’ll keep working and try to refine it to run just a touch better, but we’ll also build new equipment as well.”

A lot of work was put into the intermediate program at RCR and the results have been good. Do you feel good about running those tracks now?
“Yes, I really do. I really feel good about it. But again, we don’t need to look at it as what we are doing well, we need to look at it as what we haven’t done in order to keep trying to improve. The first part of the year it’s always hard to play the game of getting enough cars built and also refining cars, so we’ll probably keep running 164. I am excited about our program, not only the intermediate portion, but the overall program at RCR. I think our short track stuff is going to be good and our superspeedway program is good, so I am really comfortable with where we are heading. I know we need to get stronger as the year goes on, but I think we have the hardware to get some wins.”

How do you feel about your points start? The last three weeks have been hard since you probably earned a bunch of points you didn’t receive.
“Well, I’ve done this a long time and I understand that you’re going to go through things like this. We are still in a position to get what we want to get done and that’s a top 10. In no way does anyone on this team feel that we have taken ourselves out of position for that. It’s early in the year. Certainly the last three weeks have hurt us, but we’ll make the top 10 in points because of what we do, not because of what we didn’t do. I am concerned about it because it’s what we do, but I am not worried about it.”

Team Cingular has shown that you can perform well enough to play a little catch up too…
“We have. If you are running 15th-20th every week, you can’t make points up. When you can get top fives and run in the top 10 you can make them up. So, we have to be able to continue to do that and then execute on it to. We’ve had three races where we haven’t been able to execute on it, but I’ll be honest, I don’t know what we would have done differently in those three races. I don’t have an answer to it. We’ll work hard, try to build better cars and set them up better at the track. If we do that long enough, good things will happen.”

You’ve won at Texas before, so do you still know what it takes to get it done there?
“Certainly, I won the first one and ran really well in the first few races there and then I really had a lull. The lull was because that type of race track was just not the type of track we could do well on for awhile. It’s cool to go to Texas as the inaugural winner. It’s a beautiful facility. The track has gone through several changes since then, but I’ll always be the first winner there no matter what happens. It would be even cooler to have that win, then ten years later win again and it’s something we have a chance to do. It would be an honor to win at Texas on their 10th anniversary and to be able to show that longevity of winning the first one then come back ten years later to win again. “

Is Texas a better race track now then when it opened?
“Absolutely, new race tracks are generally no good and new asphalt is no good. They kept having to change it over and over and the asphalt kept having to get replaced and that’s bad for racing. The best thing we can have is really old race tracks with old asphalt. That’s when you have your best racing. Texas is absolutely the best it has ever been right now.”