Jeff Burton scored four top-10 finishes in his last four NASCAR Sprint Cup Series races of 2009. (Photo: LAT Photographic)
Article by Kris Johnson, scenedaily.com
Jeff Burton is the elder statesman at Richard Childress Racing with teammates Clint Bowyer,30, and Kevin Harvick, 34, still comfortably shy of age 40.
But at 42, Burton does not feel his relatively long-in-the-tooth status puts him at any competitive disadvantage.
“I believe that this sport has a whole lot more to do with the passion you have for it than it does the age you are,” Burton said during the recent Sprint Media Tour.
Age, as the saying goes, is just a number – and surely not the one Burton is concerned with most. That would probably be 17, which marked his finishing position last year in the Sprint Cup point standings.
Coincidentally, that’s also the number of years Burton has been racing in the series.
After missing the 2009 Chase For The Sprint Cup and going winless last season, Burton will look to revert back to his form from 2006-2008, when he made the Chase all three years and visited victory lane on four occasions.
Burton will be rejoined by veteran crew chief Todd Berrier, who took over for Scott Miller as part of an RCR reorganization last season. Berrier guided Burton to four top-10 finishes in the final four races, including consecutive runnerup finishes. That took away some of the sting from what was an otherwise largely disappointing season.
“I think that we learned a lot,” Burton said. “You hate to have to learn that way, but as long as you’re able to take something from it that can make you stronger, then you look at it as a lesson.
“I believe we will use last year as a motivating factor to be better. We’ll look back and say, ‘OK, we can’t let this happen.’”
