NASCAR Cup

Darlington II: Ward Burton preview

"I've been real lucky to have good race cars at Darlington. The CAT team has been able to capitalize on two of the races there, but there have been at least three other races where I felt like we had a car to win the race. We've got to avenge ...

Published: Aug 29, 2002, 9:43 AM

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"I've been real lucky to have good race cars at Darlington. The CAT team has been able to capitalize on two of the races there, but there have been at least three other races where I felt like we had a car to win the race. We've got to avenge ourselves from the spring race. We got caught in a wreck involving two cars in front of us and we were running in fifth at the time. We're taking a different car back this time than we ran in the spring race. We're going to work really hard to get it turning right through the corners, so hopefully we can be a threat this weekend."
- Ward Burton, driver of the Caterpillar Dodge,

DEFENDING RACE WINNER: Ward Burton is the defending race winner for the Mountain Dew Southern 500. Burton is a two-time winner at Darlington, as he won the 2000 spring race.

"The reason Darlington is so much more challenging is because we run six inches away from the wall in both corners," said Burton. "You can overshoot a little bit and that's when you get in the wall. Everybody in this garage has had that Darlington stripe, and they're going to have another one before it's over with. Actually both races we won there we had a stripe on both sides of the car. It's all right to get a little stripe. It's not all right to get a big one. Most of the grip is close to the wall, so you're going to nip it a little bit every now and then with the right rear quarter."

"The key to success at Darlington is pretty simple," said Burton. "You've got to give and take. You've got to work hard to be there at the end of the race. You run laps and learn. You race the race track and not the competitors and you don't get too involved with a one-lap battle because you've got a 500-mile battle to worry about."

EQUIPMENT: The CAT race team is taking the same car to Darlington that they raced with at Bristol last weekend. The shop guys have worked through the night to get the car rebuilt from the damage from Saturday's event at Bristol.

-bdr-

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