NASCAR Cup

Jeff Burton Phoenix press conference

JEFF BURTON --99-- Citgo SUPERGARD Taurus -- 3rd in qualifying WHAT ABOUT YOUR RUN? "It was really pretty interesting. The first lap was real slow. The car was a lot tighter than I thought it would be. I drove it the way I drove it in practice ...

Edited: Apr 15, 2002, 11:45 PM

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JEFF BURTON --99-- Citgo SUPERGARD Taurus -- 3rd in qualifying

WHAT ABOUT YOUR RUN? "It was really pretty interesting. The first lap was real slow. The car was a lot tighter than I thought it would be. I drove it the way I drove it in practice when the car was a little bit loose. I knew the first lap was slow, so I changed the way I entered the corners when I got in the throttle and we picked up quite a bit on the second lap. For once I actually guessed right, I normally guess wrong. It was a good lap for us because we picked up a lot from the first to the second lap. I take a lot of pride in being able to adjust. We've struggled with that this year, but we did that today so it feels good

AFTER LAST WEEK HOW IS THIS? "It's fun to do. Last week, I've got to admit, when you end up with a good finish, you look back on it and it was fun. You laugh about the things you did. It's just that the price you pay by getting in a wreck or causing a wreck or being in somebody else's wreck is too large. So, this is what Winston Cup racing is all about. This is a fast race track. It's a one mile race track, it's real fast. You can hurt here just as easily as you can get hurt anywhere, but a lot of times here, if something happens, it's two or three cars. At Daytona and Talladega, it's 15 cars. That's much more to the driver's liking, I think (at tracks like Phoenix). Last week was a great race, it was fun to watch and fun to participate in until the last lap. The last lap was just what you do. Bobby Labonte and Bobby Hamilton are both good drivers and that racing you saw and that wreck was caused by drivers making a mistake, but it caused because you're forced to do things you otherwise wouldn't do. If you don't just kind of leave your brain in the trunk, you can't run well. You've got to be aggressive. You've got to block. You've got to drive people below the line. You just have to and if you don't do that, you won't run to the front

WHAT ABOUT THE IDEA OF NOT TAKING AWAY A WIN OR TAKING A WIN IF A CAR IS DEEMED ILLEGAL? "I hadn't really thought about that until today. I think it's something worth talking about because it appears to me that there are things that are excusable. If you set your car up the way that we're able to set our cars up today, the front springs are probably gonna settle and the car being low is a forgiveable offense. Now, at what point is it not forgiveable? If you're 3/16's of an inch low, you get fined $20 grand for every 16th of an inch or whatever and once you get passed that, you're out. If you built a cylinder head and the c.c.'s didn't measure right and the cylinder head was illegal, just ask Jeff Gordon. If you had an illegal intake, that's an unforegiveable offense because you knew it was illegal when you put it on. But you could set your car up and not know you set it up so the front end would settle. There needs to be foregiveable incidents, but there also needs to be black and white. The problem with not being black and white is it opens the door for questions and our sport doesn't need questions. When the winner is judged to be the winner, he's the winner and he won fair and square. If you get caught doing things, you need to fined or you need to have your points taken away and there needs to be consistency in how they do that. And, really, there was consistency. They did to him what they've done to everyone else that was low. I know the 6 car got fined 25-grand last year or the year before for being low and they weren't cheating. They had soft springs in the front of the car and the car settled. They went through the sticks after the race and they were as surprised as anybody that the car was low. So I understand how it happens and that's why I think it's foregiveable, but only to a certain limit. If you let an eighth go, can I get by with a half? So there has to be a go, no-go deal."

-Ford Racing-

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