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Turning it around Burton brightens dark year with Coca-Cola win
Updated: Monday May 28, 2001 10:57 AM
By Stephen Thomas, CNNSI.com CONCORD, N.C. -- All year, Jeff Burton has been telling anyone who would listen that everything was OK. Really. All year, he's been telling anyone who would listen that neither his latest dismal performance nor his 20-something place in the points were representative of what he and the No. 99 car were capable of. Really. Well, doggone if he wasn't right. In taking a calculated risk and choosing not to pit with the other race leaders with more than 60 laps remaining, Burton drove unchallenged to his first win since last fall, winning the Coca-Cola 600 going away. The win lifts him from 25th in points to 21st. "I don't want to sound facetious or cocky," Burton said of his feelings in the aftermath of his big win, "but it felt normal. Winning is what Roush Racing is all about. Winning is why Roush Racing is here. Yes, it felt more gratifying because of all the struggles, but this is what this is all about."
Kevin Harvick finished second, recording his first top-10 finish since a seventh at Texas five races ago. Tony Stewart, putting the finishing touches on a brilliant day -- he finished sixth in the Indianapolis 500 -- was third. In addition to jumping another two spots in the points race to sixth (Stewart was 13th just four races ago), and, of perhaps even greater significance, Stewart's efforts raised almost $250,000 for Kyle Petty's Victory Junction Gang Camps. Sitting fifth when leader Bobby Labonte spun in turn 2 on lap 335, Burton stayed out on the track and consequently inherited the lead from Harvick. Burton then simply drove away from the field over the last 60 laps, eventually beating Harvick across the line by more than three seconds. Indeed, as the final laps ticked down, the win-starved Burton was less concerned with his opponents than he was with his ability to drive his own car.
"I have a bad habit of driving into the corner too deep," the forthright Burton said. "Before the race, I told [crew chief Frank Stoddard] to remind me of that, to remind to be easy, so that's what he did. I knew that we would have this thing won if I just floated the car into the corner." But until this race, Burton had done everything but float, suffering through a season peppered with terrible results -- a 39th here, a 37th there, even a 40th. In fact, after winning four races last year, Burton has managed just one, lone top-10 finish, hardly results expected from a driver who was picked to challenge for the Winston Cup title. "Let me tell you about being picked to win the championship," Burton said. "If you don't like people thinking you can win, then you shouldn't be in professional sports. Throughout all of this, all our conversations were about what it would take to win the next race, not the championship. We are not in a position to win the championship not because people picked us to win, but because we haven't done a good job. We haven't done a good job as a team until tonight." Through 12 races this year, Burton presented a mirror image of the driver who had won 15 races over the previous four years, except in one, impressive respect. Perhaps even more impressive than his somewhat unexpected return to the winner's circle -- Burton had finished 14th and 31st in his last two races -- was the candor and composure the driver demonstrated throughout. "We have been far off all year," Burton said. "What we haven't been far off in is effort. We never gave up. We haven't changed our philosophy, Jack [team owner Roush] didn't come in and say 'You boys better get your crap together,' Frank and I didn't yell at each other. There's nothing wrong with the cars, nothing wrong with the engine. We found out what people were made of. This doesn't mean we can just go home and rest. This doesn't mean everything is great, everything is lovely. There are still some hard days ahead of us, but this is a good day."
The best in a long time.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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