NASCAR Cup

Chicagoland: Jeff Burton - Friday media visit

Jeff Burton, No. 31 AT&T Mobility Monte Carlo SS, met with members of the media and discussed the top-35 qualifying rule, the team's performance so far this season, the teammate situation, the new Hutchins hybrid device, NASCAR's drug policy, how ...

Edited: Jul 14, 2007, 12:05 AM

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Jeff Burton, No. 31 AT&T Mobility Monte Carlo SS, met with members of the media and discussed the top-35 qualifying rule, the team's performance so far this season, the teammate situation, the new Hutchins hybrid device, NASCAR's drug policy, how the NASCAR community bands together in times of tragedy, how frequent air travel is a big part of the lives of the NASCAR community, what it would be like to win at the Brickyard and the prestige of winning there and how willing he would be to assist a teammate that is leaving.

Select quotes from driver interview:

ON GRADING HIS SEASON SO FAR AND WHERE THE TEAM HAS STRUGGLED AND EXCELLED: "I'd give us a B. I think we've done a nice job. We've been reasonably fast. We need to get some more speed. Our downfall honestly has been the Car of Tomorrow program. Hasn't been our downfall but certainly hasn't been our strong point. That's the area right now that we need to improve in, but same as last year, I think that we just need a little more speed. We're a good team, we're a consistent team. We're not great right now and we have to strive for greatness if we want to win this championship."

ON THE REALITY OF THE TEAMMATE SITUATION: "Teammates are vital to success. The better the teams work together the better opportunity for success. Obviously this game has a lot to do with funding. It has a lot to do with managing the funds that you have. Having more teammates allows more money to be spent, more revenue, more resources. Obviously that benefits all the teams. The teamwork concept is more advantageous off the track than on the track. We have a duty and a responsibility to our fans, our crew members, our sponsors to go out and try to win with each and every race and the AT&T car can't expect the Jack Daniel's car to pull over and get out of the way. They're here to win too. So we compete on the track with great respect for each other, use each collectively to try to do it better than everybody else."

ON HOW THE NASCAR COMMUNITY REALLY COMES TOGETHER IN TIMES OF TRAGEDY: "Well I think there's a lot of respect for what the France family has done for the sport. One thing that this sport is is compassionate, there's no question about it. As fierce as we battle and as much as we may disagree and all those things, this is a compassionate garage. I don't know, it's always been like that as long as I've been in this sport. It's been like that. I surely hope it continues to be like that. It's a terrible time for the France family to lose Bill and then Bruce, that's pretty hard to imagine. I feel really bad for Lesa and her son and the whole family. It's hard to imagine what they're going through. I feel really bad for a 15-year-old boy to lose your granddad and a father within that amount of time. I feel really bad for him.

"What I think is really cool about this sport is that a lot of times things are done behind the scenes a month after the fact and a lot of things are done not for media, not for those reasons, but for the right reasons. Everybody always is very supportive at a very obvious time when it's needed, the question is who needs it, when do you need it, six months from now how do you help and that's what this sport will do a really good job of."

-credit: gm racing

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