Burton knows about having a good time

  While many NASCAR drivers live for the intensity of the Chase, South Boston’s Jeff Burton looks at the final 10 races differently.

  “This is the most fun 10 weeks of the year,” Burton said. “This is what you live for. Every time I get in the Chase, I tell myself I waited my whole life to be in this position, so that’s a hell of a cool thing.”

  Burton, driver of the #31 Caterpillar Chevy feels many his competitors are overcome by the intensity of the Chase.

  “We tend to get caught up in the pressure of it,” he said. “But man, we’re playing a game and it’s supposed to be fun.”

  But that does not mean Burton should be taken lightly when the Chase gets under way.

  “My deal is that I’m going to go race as hard as I know how to race,” he said. “I’m going to ask my team to work as hard as they know how to work. We’re going to work together and try to defeat problems, but we’re going to have fun with it.”

One Devil of an answer

  After Jimmie Johnson, driver of the #48 Lowes Chevrolet, has won four consecutive Sprint Cup titles, some wonder if he is vulnerable to being knocked off this season.

  Jeff Burton thinks so.

  “They are vulnerable as everybody is vulnerable,” Burton said. “There is no team in any situation that is not vulnerable. Tiger Woods is vulnerable; the Lakers are vulnerable; The Yankees are vulnerable; everybody is-”

  But Burton quickly amended his answer, “-Duke’s not- but everybody else is.”

Peak a BOO for Stewart

  Behind the wheel of the #14 Old Spice/Office Depot Chevy, driver Tony Stewart picked up his first win of the season last week at Atlanta, one race shy of the beginning of the Chase. But don’t ask Stewart if he is peaking at the right time.

  “The phrase of peaking at the right time is the dumbest phrase I’ve ever heard anybody say,” Stewart admonished reporters. “So if any of you guys use it you’re idiots because there’s no such thing as a peak. This is a sport where the technology never stops so how can you peak when the next week what you have isn’t the same as what you need. There’s no such thing as peaking at the right time there’s only momentum.”

More scary thoughts

  For all practical purposes, there was only one slot in the Chase left up for grabs on Saturday night.

  Greg Biffle needed to simply come in 43rd or better to secure his spot,  but Clint Bowyer, driver of the #33 Cheerios/Hamburger Helper Chevy, had a little more work to do.

  Bowyer held a 117 point lead over Ryan Newman, driver of the #39 U.S. ARMY Chevy.

  Ironically, Bowyer and Newman were garaged side by side during Cup practice and the two were often seen talking. Was Newman using the moment to try to get into Bowyer’s head?

  “I don’t what to get inside Clint’s head,” Newman laughed. “That’s scary enough racing next to him let along getting inside his head.”

  It appeared that Newman was not alone. Even Bowyer’s teammate, points leader Kevin Harvick was not about to offer advice. “No,” he laughed. “I just don’t even want to be near him.”

It’s not like we aren’t trying

  It has been a long dry spell for Dale Earnhardt Jr., and the driver of the No. 88 Amp Energy/National Guard Chevrolet continues to battle with little progress in results.

  On Saturday night in Richmond, Earnhardt hoped to build off recent testing that may be far beyond the norm. “It’s a set up that only we are running, I’ll tell you that,” he laughed. “So hopefully it works good.”

  Regardless of the outcome, Earnhardt feels there’s still a lot or work to do.
  “The initial goal is to see what kind of things we need to do to our team to get ourselves better,” he said. “And we made a lot of changes in the off-season and we thought we would be better and we did see, especially at the beginning of the year, where we thought okay, here are some things happening that are good and maybe we did help ourselves.”

  However, the adjustments did not hold true. “From the halfway point on we’ve been the same team that we were last year,” Earnhardt said. “And so hopefully in the next 10 races we can try to see what it is it’s missing. I think the entire company could use a bit of a boost.”

  Therefore the game plan for Earnhardt continues along the same path. “We’re going to do as much testing as we can and just try to be a better team,” he said. “I mean I don’t really know what the answer is to make ourselves better yet, but hopefully in the next couple of months we can figure some of those things out.”

At Richmond, Earnhardt started 9th but finished 34th, six laps down.