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NASCAR Sprint-Cup Series
CUP: Urgency For Burton
Jeff Burton, who has finished no worse than seventh in points in each of the last three seasons, has seen his 2009 campaign get off to a dreadful start...
Tom Jensen  |  Posted February 27, 2009   Las Vegas, NV
Jeff Burton says NASCAR must be careful not to put so much emphasis on the last two or three races that others aren't meaningful. (Photo: LAT Photographic)

The 2009 NASCAR Sprint Cup season is heading into just its third points race, but already there is a pronounced sense of urgency among some teams. And no one knows that better than Jeff Burton, driver of the No. 31 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet.

Burton, who has finished no worse than seventh in points in each of the last three seasons, has seen his 2009 campaign get off to a dreadful start. He was 28th in the Daytona 500 and was even worse last week, finishing 32nd in the Auto Club 500.

Now 31st in points, Burton needs to get back on track this weekend in the Shelby 427 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. “I think there is a sense of urgency,” said Burton Friday morning at the 1.5-mile LVMS track. “I think if it’s not, you are not in full understanding of the situation that you are in. We know that good race teams run bad from time to time. I feel like we are a good race team. But, there certainly is a sense of urgency. We ran well at Daytona, we just got caught up in a bad deal at the end. Then last week we ran terrible. This is a results-oriented business and we need to put some results down. … I wouldn’t call it a sense of panic, but I definitely would think that a sense of urgency is a good way to describe it.”

Last week’s poor result in Southern California was especially frustrating for Burton, given that RCR generally runs well at intermediate tracks. “Going in to the race last week, we were really struggling in practice, I wouldn’t say really struggling, but I would say we were 15th, 20th-place car,” said Burton. “We made a bunch of changes on Sunday and quickly became a 40th-place car. We need to recover from that. That was a bad day.”

LVMS is a track where Burton could well get back up to speed, figuratively and literally. In his first three races here from 1998-2000, the Virginia native scored two victories and a second-place finish. Last year, he was a more-than-respectable fifth here.

“We feel good about this race track,” said Burton. “We have run well a lot. If there is anywhere we should be able to come and perform at a high level, this is kind of the track. It is a good place for us to come after a bad weekend and we are looking forward to hopefully turning the corner a little bit.”

So now, it’s time for Burton and the rest of the No. 31 crew to get it done and come up big in Las Vegas.

“You can’t do what we have done the first two weeks, finish 28th and 33rd or whatever it was, and expect to make the Chase,” said Burton. “We also know that we have plenty of time to recover at this point in the year. There is plenty of time to catch it back up. Several teams have had a history of getting back and having to make it up. There is no question you can do it, but you have to run well to do. We had two bad finishes two races in to the year so we aren’t afforded as many as somebody that may have had two good finishes at the first two races of the year.”

LAS VEGAS CUP SERIES PRACTICE RESULTS

Tom Jensen is the Senior NASCAR Editor for SPEEDtv.com, the former Executive Editor of NASCAR Scene and a contributing Editor for TruckSeries.com. He is the author of “Cheating: The Bad Things Good NASCAR Nextel Cup Racers Do In Pursuit of SPEED,” and has appeared on television and radio shows to discuss NASCAR racing. Jensen is the past President of the National Motorsports Press Association. Jensen is the 1997 National Motorsports Press Association Writer of the Year and has won numerous national and state awards for news reporting, columns and feature writing. The Answer Man is back at SPEEDtv.com. Tom Jensen answers your questions during every race week and looks forward to hearing from you - please e-mail it to

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