NASCAR Sprint-Cup Series
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CUP: Burton – Fans Stick By Their Man
RCR driver says Chase race should stay close...
Mike Hembree  |  Posted November 05, 2010   Fort Worth, TX
Jeff Burton heads to Daytona in 2011 with a 77-race winless streak. (Photo: LAT Photographic)
As the days wind down to a precious few and the Chase for the Sprint Cup race continues to be tight, the Anybody But Jimmie Johnson Club is becoming anxious.

Johnson has won four straight Cup championships, of course, and there are those who would rather see the Wicked Witch of the West (or East, or South) win than endure a fifth title in a row by Super-J.

It’s to be expected, said Jeff Burton, who’s watching the championship run with interest.

“I think most people want to see a different champion, and I think that’s just based on the fact that no one driver has all the fans,” Burton said Friday. “If Jimmie (Johnson) has 20 percent of the fans – that’s an incredible stat considering all the other drivers, but that means there’s 80 percent that don’t want to see him win.

“So, from that standpoint, I think that’s what people are talking about is that the majority of the fans want to see someone else win. With the exception of maybe Junior [Dale Earnhardt Jr.], I think the majority of the fans don’t want to see anybody else win because it’s not their guy. I think that’s really what it boils down to.

“I think what Jimmie’s done is incredible. It should be respected. [There] should be a lot of reverence for it, to be honest, because it’s an incredible feat what they’ve been able to do and to be in the hunt again. I think I told you all last week, when Tiger [Woods] beats the field by 18, everybody watches. When he’s down by four, nobody watches. It’s an interesting phenomenon, but at the end of the day it’s the majority of people who aren’t a fan of anyone, and they want to see somebody else win.”

Johnson is attempting to hold off Denny Hamlin (14 points behind) and Kevin Harvick (38 back) in the quest for his fifth straight title. Burton said the race could stay very close until the final checkered flag at Homestead-Miami Speedway in three weeks.

“I see the real possibility of it staying this close,” he said. “You start looking, and now you have three people that are really close and now you start to dissect how good they are at every race track. You can make a case that all three of them are really good at all three of the next three race tracks. They’ve all performed very, very well.

“We have three different style race tracks coming up that they’ve all performed well in all three styles. I think it could be really close. I don’t know who you would pick, honestly looking at it. If I was an oddsmaker, I don’t know who I would pick. I think it is truly an equal race.”

Even if Johnson builds his lead this week in Texas, his challengers could rally in Phoenix or Homestead, Burton said.
Jeff Burton's No. 31 Caterpillar Chevrolet in the garage area at Texas Motor Speedway. (Photo: Tom Jensen SPEED)

“Anything can happen,” he said. “A guy can cut a tire, a guy can break a motor, a guy can make a mistake, could have a wrong pit stop at the wrong time – all those things can happen and take a guy that had a 25- or 30-point lead or even a 70-point lead and now he doesn’t have it.

“If someone goes out and maxes out with points with laps led and wins the race, that’s a big swing in points right there compared to a guy that runs 12th. It certainly makes the odds better, but it’s not inconceivable that a guy could go into Homestead 45, 50, 55 points back and still win the championship.”

The way the championship should not be won, Burton said, is for a teammate to move over to allow a title contender to win a race. Not good manners, he said.

“If I was second in points and I had a teammate win the race and had I won the race, I would have won the championship, honestly I wouldn’t want to win the championship in that regard,” he said. “No matter what you think, you’re always going to know that you probably shouldn’t have won the championship. I just think there’s a huge, huge integrity issue with that kind of thing.”

Mike Hembree is NASCAR Editor for SPEED.com and has been covering motorsports for 28 years. He has written several books on NASCAR, including "NASCAR: The Definitive History of America's Sport" and "Then Tony Said To Junior: The Best NASCAR Stories Ever Told". He is a six-time winner of the National Motorsports Press Association Writer of the Year Award.

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