Dover International Speedway is the next test for the 2008 NASCAR Chase for the Sprint Cup Championship and veteran Jeff Burton is hoping to tame "The Monster Mile" for his second career Sprint Cup Series win at the one-mile concrete track.
In 29 Cup starts at Dover, Burton has one win, six top-five and 12 top-10 finishes.
Since joining Richard Childress Racing in August 2004, Burton has competed in eight races at DIS, garnering an 11th-place average finish and posting only one finish outside the top 15.
All told, the 20-time Cup Series winner has one win, two top-five, four top-10 and seven top-15 finishes at Dover since joining the Childress-led organization.
In the mix again for this year's Chase, Burton knows Dover is one of the toughest hurdles on the way to winning the championship.
“It is, but I’m glad that Dover is in the Chase," Burton said. "What’s important for the Chase is a good cross-section of race tracks that we run at during the year. Dover is the kind of race track that is very demanding physically, emotionally and structurally for the race car. I think it fits in the Chase."
"At the same time, Dover is one of the races where we have the least amount of cars on the lead lap. It’s hard to get your lap back there because we typically have long green-flag runs. Every race is important because they all pay the same amount of points but it is a race where people can stand to have a bad race.”
Burton kicked off the 2008 Chase with a top five finish last week at New Hampshire and looks to continue his consistency going into Dover.
"Dover is an exceptionally fast race track," Burton said. "For a mile-long race track, it generates a lot of speed. You’re in the throttle a lot of the time, there’s a lot of banking and you really have to work hard to get your car to turn well."
"You have to make it turn well and keep it where you can run on the bottom. You don’t want to lock in so you can only run on the bottom. You want to be able to run different grooves. If you can do those things, you can run really well there.”
Although another top five finish would no doubt keep Burton in the thick of the title chase, he says that's not the strategy he takes going into each weekend.
"At the end of the day you want to win every race you can, because that means you're having success," he said. "I think one of the big misconceptions about points I think a lot of people think we go into a race, it's in their mind if we finish tenth, it's a good day. It's not like that. We go into every race trying to win the race."
"If you can't win the race, you try to finish second. If you can't finish second, you try to finish third. You want to finish as high as you can. You're not going to win every race, obviously. But you race to go win as many races as you can. But that's what we do."
