Jeff Burton’s strong third-place finish at New Hampshire Motor Speedway on Sunday appears to be another sign that he’s regaining the form that has seen him win 21 Sprint Cup races in his 21-year career.
After winning two races and finishing sixth in the standings in 2008, the driver of the No. 31 Chevrolet at Richard Childress Racing has been winless since and failed to finish in the top 10 in points.
But in recent weeks, he appears to be picking up the pace. And he says that, despite his 17th-place points position, a Chase berth isn’t out of the question.
“We have been running a lot better the last two months,” he said. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying we are the class of the field, but we are definitely making progress. And we feel like we are starting to build on something, and we understand what we’re looking for now.
“And we don’t think we are out of the Chase. I know everybody else in the world does, but we don’t. We feel like we can still do it. There’s a lot of stuff that’s going to happen between now and Richmond [the final race of the regular season].”
Busy week for Dillion: Austin Dillon has a busy week coming up. He's set to run the Nationwide Series race at Chicagoland Speedway on Sunday, which is NASCAR's major race of the week with the Sprint Cup Series taking a week off.
Dillon then will travel to Eldora Speedway in Rossburg, Ohio, for testing on Tuesday for the Mudsummer Classic Camping World Truck Series race on Wednesday at the ½-mile dirt track owned by Tony Stewart. After Wednesday night’s main event at Eldora, it’s on to Indianapolis Motor Speedway, where he’ll run both the Nationwide and Sprint Cup races.
It’s NASCAR’s return to dirt racing that seems to have him most excited. Next Wednesday marks the first time in 43 years that a major NASCAR series raced on dirt.
“It’s going to be wild,” said Dillon, who grew up racing on dirt track and ran a dirt race at Wythe Raceway in Rural Retreat, Va., on Monday. “I don’t know totally 100 percent what to expect.”
He said he does expect the heat races to be interesting, especially since the track will be wetter for them, and because many of the drivers have little dirt experience.
“The heat races are definitely going to be wild for the guys that are trying to get in the race and slide jobbing,” he said. “Hopefully, you see some of that stuff that dirt tracks are famous for. I think you will. It’s just a matter of keeping everybody calm at the beginning to not have a ton of cautions and making sure that the guys with less experience are talking to the guys that have some dirt experience out there.”
Rules made clearer: NASCAR officials are hoping new procedures for rules enforcement will eliminate most of the "gray area" in the rule book, as well as questions about penalties for violating those rules.
Plans are to transform the rule book from mostly written rules to CAD images, and there will be penalties spelled out for specific infractions.
Steve O’Donnell, NASCAR’s senior vice-president for racing operations, said on a teleconference that the changes to be put in place in the coming months will make rules and the penalties for not following them more understandable. That should benefit not only the race teams but fans and media as well.
“NASCAR has been criticized sometimes for being somewhat subjective, and when we look at the rule book in the future, we want to categorize penalties so they’re listed out in the rule book,” he said. “Ultimately, all of this that we’re looking at is to make it more clear. We still want our teams to innovate. That’s not something we’re going away from. But we just want to paint a clearer picture.”
Cordele to host qualifier: The Fayetteville-based United Sprint Car Series once regularly sanctioned races on both dirt and asphalt tracks, but Saturday's race at Watermelon Capital Speedway in Cordele will be the circuit's first pavement race in three years.
The Cordele event will serve as a qualifier for the circuit’s next asphalt race, which will be held on the quarter-mile Legends track at Atlanta Motor Speedway on Aug. 30 as a companion event to pole qualifying for the AdvoCare 500 Sprint Cup Series race at AMS.
Drivers who finish in the top 10 in the A Main at Cordele will be guaranteed a starting spot at AMS.
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