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Jeff
Burton (left) and his brother Ward stand next to the #22
Bill Davis Racing Dodge during the rain delay.
Photo
Courtesy Dodge/Getty
Images |
Jeff Burton, driver of the No. 99 Citgo Taurus, came in out of
the rain to hold a Q&A session in the Texas Motor Speedway
Infield Media Center. Burton is scheduled to start 37th when
the green flag falls for the Samsung/Radio Shack 500.
DO YOU SEE NASCAR TRYING RESTRICTOR PLATES HERE NEXT YEAR? "A
lot happens in a year. I suspect that next year we'll be going
slower anyway. I think by next year we'll be running different
rules. I think they'll take some of the downforce away from us
so when we come back we won't need plates. I see us toward the
end of the year, if the championship isn't in jeopardy,
they'll probably make some changes. That's my opinion. I have
no reason to say that other than I do know that everybody
thinks we make too much downforce. Having said all that, in
the winter next year would give a good opportunity to take
some downforce away and come here with less downforce and then
we won't need restrictor plates."
DOES NASCAR NEED TO ADDRESS WHAT HAPPENED IN THE BUSCH RACE
WITH MICHAEL WALTRIP'S CAR? "There are a lot of things that
NASCAR is addressing on making the cars bigger. Really, at the
end of the day, that's the problem. Even though the windows
are bigger than they've ever been, they're still small. The
seats have come such a long way, but egress hasn't. We've made
egress worse than it used to be, so you can't get out of these
things. Even when the car isn't wrecked it's hard to get out
of them. For me to get out of my car, I literally hurt my
shoulder once trying to get out of my car -- it's just hard to
get out and in a bad situation it's even harder. We've always
got to look and learn from situations. For whatever the reason
was that Michael couldn't get out, we need to look at it and
figure out what it was to make it better. He told me his
window net was stuck. When a car is upside down, gravity isn't
working to get the window net down, so a lot of the stuff that
makes the window net work when you unlatch it, now it doesn't
work. The window net is hooked to the roof hoop and into the
door bars and if those things get bent, then it makes it a
problem there too. So we have to look at everything. Anytime
something happens we need to look at it and figure out how to
learn from it."
A YEAR AGO THIS WEEK THE ROUSH TEAMS WERE KIND OF DOWN. WHAT
HAPPENED BETWEEN NOVEMBER AND FEBRUARY? "Nothing happened
between November and February -- a lot of stuff happened
between March and July of last year. You don't just turn the
switch on and start running better and you don't just turn the
switch off and start running poorly -- things progress that
way. We went into last year feeling better than we've ever
felt. We had the right people, we had the right cars, every
team was really excited and ready to go racing. We felt good
about it, but none of us were running. We started looking at,
'Man, what are we doing wrong? The tires are different. What's
different?' Each team made a contribution to us running
better. Each team went out and learned a little something and
then we all started applying those things. Through that, we've
performed better this year than we did last year. The 99 car,
we haven't run as well this year as we did at the end of last
year -- we've run worse -- but we've done a better job of
managing our year. We haven't turned poor finishes into
disastrous finishes. We've kept ourselves in position."
IS THERE MORE COOPERATION AMONG THE FOUR TEAMS? "No. Last year
the teams worked together like never before. I kept telling
everybody last year that our teams are working better than
they ever have, there's more cooperation, there's more
research and development, there's more willingness to try
things than there ever had been. Last year was kind of a
change at Roush Racing and we didn't see good results from it,
but it wasn't that we weren't doing the right things. All of
those things are still in place. Now, certainly, we swapped
the two teams but those people are still in our company and
those same people were being productive last year as well. We
put them with a different driver to try to get something else
out of them, but, other than that, there wasn't a big change
over the winter. We migrated toward a change throughout all of
last year and now we're seeing the results of some of that."
HOW DOES IT FEEL TO SEE HOW THE SWAP HAS WORKED? "It feels
great. I kind of stuck my neck out there a little bit with the
suggestion that we do it. I had crew members that weren't
happy with me and it wasn't an easy transition. It was a big
change for a lot of people. I'm known in the company as
somebody that doesn't mind sticking my nose into just about
everybody else's business and when you do something that
effects someone, they can get offended pretty easily and I
don't blame them. It's worked really well so far, so, right
now, I'm OK. It really wasn't a bold move, if anything it was
a show of support for our people. I think that was the thing I
wanted everybody to understand was that we didn't go out and
hire a new crew chief. We didn't go out and get rid of people
and bring in new people, we kept the same people we had and we
just restructured who they worked with. To me, that's the
ultimate amount of respect saying, 'Hey, we want you to be in
the company so we're gonna change things around so it works
for you.' And that's what we did for all of those people and,
so far, it's worked out great."
WHAT MADE YOU THINK THAT WOULD WORK? "Because I know Mark
Martin is a great race car driver and I know Kurt Busch is a
really, really good race car driver and gonna be a great race
car driver. I know that Jimmy Fennig cares about his race cars
and thinks about his race cars as much as anybody and Ben
Leslie showed remarkable signs of being able to get the job
done himself. So I looked at those four people and it was
like, Mark was really needing a change because he wasn't
running well. It wasn't Jimmy Fennig's fault that he wasn't
running well and it wasn't Mark's fault he wasn't running
well, it just wasn't working. But when we started thinking
about doing that, the thought of Jimmy Fennig not being a crew
chief in our company didn't make any sense. That was what made
me think about it, the thought of Jimmy Fennig leaving our
company to go be a crew chief for someone else and then having
to race against Jimmy. Jimmy is really talented, I didn't see
a lack of talent. If you look around your company and you see
people that don't care as much as they used to and people that
aren't putting the dedication in and people that have lost the
desire, then they've got to go. No matter who they are --
driver, car owner, crew chief, whoever -- if you don't have
the desire and dedication and the ability to do it, then you
just can't be there, but that wasn't the case with any of
those people."
WHAT DID YOU SEE IN THE BUSCH RACE THAT WILL HELP IN THE CUP
RACE? "The biggest thing I learned was that if you ever get
tight, you're in big trouble. You obviously don't want to be
loose, but turn two -- behind other cars your car gets really
tight anyway and if you start off tight you're gonna be that
much worse. You've got to keep your car turning. It's got to
get to the middle of the corner down there and be wide open in
the gas and turning well off the corner. If you do that, then
you can run well. Even if your entry speed is a little bit
off, if you can run from the center of the corner off, you'll
be just fine." DID
YOU FEEL ANYMORE OF A LOAD IN THE CAR THAN USUAL? "My ears
kept popping. I had a Navy pilot say to me once that when they
fly a lot under tremendous G-force loads that they have
problems with their ears. He asked me if I ever had problems
with my ears and I didn't know what he was talking about. At
some race tracks we go to my ears pop and yesterday my ears
equalized probably three times during the race. I've never had
that before. It was pretty interesting." WHAT IF MARK
HAD SUGGESTED A SWITCH WITH YOU AND FRANK? "I wouldn't have
been interested in that because Frank were and still are
working very well together. And, at the time, we were the best
running Roush team. We were the ones knocking off the top
fives and we were the ones earning the points. We will never
break up a combination that is working and Frank and myself,
at that point, were working. We're not working now, but that
doesn't mean we're gonna make a change. We're not working now
as well as we need to, but from the midway point to last year
we were the best Roush team. To make that change at that point
wouldn't have made any sense."
JEFF BURTON CONTINUED -- WHAT IF YOU WERE IN MARK'S SITUATION?
"If I were confident that I was getting a crew chief that
could get the job done for me, then that's what I'd want. If
anyone in the company didn't feel good about it, we couldn't
have done it. When I say anyone, I mean the crew chiefs and
the drivers. If Jimmy Fennig didn't look at Kurt Busch and
say, 'I know Kurt Busch can't win races,' then that wouldn't
have worked for Jimmy Fennig. And if Mark would have looked at
Ben and said, 'I don't think Ben can get it done," then that
wouldn't have worked. Everyone had to believe that it was
gonna work. Those four people had to believe in it. If any one
of those four people didn't believe in it, then it wouldn't
have worked."
WHAT ABOUT KURT BUSCH AND HIS AGGRESSIVENESS? "Kurt is a
really good race car driver. The time I've spent with him and
time I've watched him race, he's intent on winning. Kurt is
pretty smart. One of the things we preach at Roush is you've
got to race the way you want to race. No one is gonna tell you
how to race, but if you race clean and you race smart and you
drive people the way they drive you, nine times out of 10 that
will work in your favor. All young drivers have trouble with
that, but Kurt did at Bristol what he felt got done to him.
'Here's a guy that knocked me out of the way, so I can knock
him out of the way.' That's the rules we live by at Roush
Racing. We don't go looking for trouble, that's not what we
do, but if you come looking for trouble with us it's there for
you and that's how it all went down. I know Jimmy was upset
about it and everybody says stuff and does stuff in the heat
of the moment, but you can't do something to somebody and then
have it done to you and be mad about it. It just doesn't work
like that."
PEOPLE WERE SURPRISED THOUGH BECAUSE HE DOESN'T LOOK SO TOUGH.
"He doesn't look very tough does he (laughing). He and his
girlfriend flew down with me to the Final Four on Monday night
and I had a dinner meeting. There were 14 of us sitting at a
table and even though he flew down with me, he wasn't eating
dinner with us he was eating dinner with someone else at the
same restaurant. He walked by and the guy next to me didn't
know who he was and he said, 'Look at that kid and his
girlfriend. What are they, 16 or 17 years old?' And I said,
'That's the race winner from last week, that's who that is.'
He looked at me and said, 'What you mean?' And I said, 'That's
Kurt Busch, he won the Winston Cup race last week,' and the
guy said, 'No way.' He cut himself shaving for the first time
this morning. He's got a band-aid on his chin (laughing). If
you go talk to people he raced against in the truck series,
half of those people he made mad so he is an aggressive
driver, there's no doubt about it."
WHAT ABOUT MATT'S TEAM? "Yeah. It's so hard to explain and to
understand why you run well at times and why you don't. It's
just difficult. Matt Kenseth never forgot how to drive a car.
Robbie Reiser never forgot how to work with Matt Kenseth and
they didn't have some success for a while. It's like Frank and
I right now. Right now, Frank and I are doing the worst job at
Roush Racing of leading races and running in the front --
we're doing the worst job. But the last three years we've been
Roush Racing -- we've been the team that's won the most races
and done all those things so it ebbs and flows. You can't just
step back and say, 'Well, it's not our time,' you've got to go
do the things that makes it your time. You always have to go
out and say, 'We're gonna be the best team or we're gonna lead
laps and do whatever it takes to do that.' But it's hard to
maintain that. Even though you try really hard and you go into
every race and every year thinking, 'Man, we've got all our
stuff like it needs to be,' but sometimes it just doesn't work
out and you don't know why. That's what makes all professional
athletics tough. The Dallas Cowboys don't win every Super
Bowl. Regardless of what everybody thinks, the New York
Yankees don't win every World Series. It's hard to put the
group of people together no matter how much money you have and
all those things and win every single year. I remember leaving
Pocono going to the airport, riding behind a station wagon
that had written on the back window 'Dale Earnhardt, it's time
to cash in the 401(k).' I mean, he couldn't run, he couldn't
finish in the lead lap and then the year before he passed away
he finished second in the points. This thing goes up and down
and you've got to work really hard to always stay on the
upside of it, but you're not always gonna be on the upside."
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