News Article

Jeff Burton pulls into Victory Lane at Dover

September 24, 2006
Brian Smith

Jeff Burton put together 17 wins in just four years early in his then-Winston Cup career. But nearly five years ago, suddenly the well ran dry.

The well is now open again after Burton won the NASCAR NEXTEL Cup race on Sunday at Dover International Speedway, surviving a thrilling late battle with Matt Kenseth that ended when Kenseth ran out of gas with two laps remaining. Carl Edwards finished second, followed by Jeff Gordon, Kurt Busch and Greg Biffle. It was Burton's first win since August 28, 2001 at Phoenix, a span of 175 races, and put him in the lead in the Chase for the NEXTEL Cup Championship.

"I went into this race and didn't think we had a chance in the world to win this race," Burton said. "I can't believe we won this race. We were as bad in practice as we'd been in months. We stuck to our plan and made some minor adjustments this morning. It was an example of being right at the right time, and that's what happened today. We only led six laps, but it was the right six laps. Matt and I had a great battle, and it was a lot of fun. I'm glad he didn't run out of gas in front of me, because I would have knocked the hell out of him, we were running so close. To race them that hard was a lot of fun. I could feel my team with me.

"My team is a very emotional group, a very together group. They've been together for a long time. This isn't about me. This is about us. I was dreading coming back to the garage looking them in the eye [if I hadn't won] the race. They deserve to win and deserve to be able to enjoy Victory Lane. I'm really happy for all those guys."

Burton started from the 19th position and didn't have a good thing going early. He had fallen to 22nd place by lap 100, but things started to turn around.

"When we took off, we weren't all that good - maybe a 10th or 15th place car. [Crew chief Scott Miller] just kept working on it and today was kind of the backwards of what most of our races have been lately. We had a really good pit stop at the end, Scott had the car right at the end and those two things together are why we won."

Photo by Tom Whitmore

The win capped what was certainly an unusual week for Burton. He came to Dover as the subject of scrutiny following televised reports that his crew had altered his wheels to allow in-race adjustments in tire pressure. He met with the media Friday morning and vehemently denied the reports. After the win, he said it didn't serve as any extra motivation, but he again emphasized that the source of the report was not true.

"At the end of the day we know the truth, and we were very comfortable in ourselves," Burton said. "At the same time, we didn't like the fact that something got out there that wasn't true. If my five-year-old behaved the way someone did when they started that story, I'd be disappointed. Whoever started it, if he can look himself in the mirror and think he's a funny guy or did something that was neat, he should be afraid of himself. I'm talking about the person that gave him the erroneous story, and if he can sleep at night, good for him."

Kenseth led more than half the race, a total of 215 laps. But Burton finally ran him down with five laps remaining. It was shaping up to be quite a finish, but many people had forgotten that at the last caution around lap 324, Kenseth was one of the few cars that didn't come in for fuel - a decision that raised some eyebrows at the time. It was because the crew didn't think he needed to, and it left Kenseth quite surprised to run dry.

"Obviously [fuel] was an issue. I didn't know it was. We got our last caution and they said we were fine, so I didn't think about it. So that's pretty frustrating. We messed up in the pits and I was pretty pumped that we were able to overcome that."

The error in the pits was a slight one, where the car initially stopped on the pit box line and had to be moved back to avoid a one-lap penalty. But Kenseth wasn't the only one to have problems with Dover's pit road. Edwards was leading the race on lap 49 when he came in to pit and momentarily forgot what day it was.

"I was going for my Busch pit [from Saturday's Dover 200]," Edwards said. "I drove right past my pit. But we got back up to the front. We had an awesome car. It was a lot of fun - the best car that I've ever had here. It was a lot more fun than in the past."

Gordon started from the pole, his first such start since 2005 and his first Dover pole in more than 10 years. But his car wasn't quite as good on Sunday as it was on Friday.

"Our qualifying setup and our race setup were two totally different ends of the spectrum," he said. "But the effort was unbelievable.  The fight was unbelievable. We didn't have the best car, but we did have the best pit stall. That certainly helped.  We had to make some adjustments, and one I asked for I wish I hadn't. Our car was good on the long runs, and luckily for that we made up some ground. To come out of here with a third place finish, I had no idea we were going to end the day like that."

Despite starting on the pole, Gordon never led a lap because Ryan Newman blasted past him right off the green flag and led the first lap.  As a result, Gordon missed out on the five bonus points awarded to any driver that leads a lap.

"I didn't feel like wrecking on the first lap was worth five points," he said. "I'm disappointed we didn't lead a lap. I really wanted those five points, and I hope this thing at the end of the season doesn't come down to five points."

It's certainly plausible that it might, because the results left Gordon in second place in the Chase, just six points behind Burton. Kenseth and Denny Hamlin are tied for third place, just 18 points back.

Kevin Harvick came into the race as the Chase leader, but came out 54 points back, in fifth place had finished every single race of the season in both the Nextel Cup series and the Busch Series, but found that all good things must come to an end. His engine let go with 33 laps remaining, giving him his first DNF of the year in either circuit.

Other Chase drivers had rough days, and two of them unofficially conceded any chance at the title. Just 13 laps in, Tony Stewart uncharacteristically spun in Turn 4 and collected Kasey Kahne, dooming Kahne to a 38th-place finish and leaving him 178 points back in the Chase. It came after a 16th-place finish last week in New Hampshire.

"No more championship," Kahne said. "We all thought we had a shot to win the Nextel Cup, but you can't have two rough weeks [during the Chase], I don't think."

The same sentiment befell Kyle Busch, who blew an engine on lap 110 and finished 40th, following a 38th-place finish at New Hampshire.

"We're done," said Busch, 224 points back. "It's really a shame. We were one of the best cars out there, we drove from about 20th up to third in one run and we were catching the leaders every lap. Nothing came out the bottom - we must have broken a valve."

The bottom half of the Chase finds Mark Martin in sixth place (-75), Dale Earnhardt, Jr. seventh (-102), Jimmie Johnson eighth (-136), then Kahne and Busch.

Overall, the race was slowed by 10 cautions for 48 laps. The race started slow, with four accidents in the first 50 laps. But it picked up after that, with only five cautions in the race's final 250 miles. Proceedings came to an end just in time, as anticipated heavy showers waited to fall on the track until 12 minutes after the checkered flag waved.