Race notebook: Burton has good luck in million-dollar races

Thursday, March 2, 2000 | 10:45 a.m.

Jeff Burton's track record last season in Winston No Bull 5 races was pretty amazing.

Burton won the $1 million bonus in two of the five races -- at Charlotte and Darlington -- and won last year's Las Vegas 400, although he was not eligible for the bonus in that race.

But the 33-year-old chalked up his success in the high-paying races to luck.

"It just kind of worked out that way, I think," Burton said. "It happened to be that some of the tracks that we have had success on (were offering the bonus).

"We didn't go into any of those races thinking, 'All right, this is a No Bull 5 race, we've got to win it to get that million.' We went into them just like we did any race, it just happened to be that we put it all together in those races."

Burton laughed off the suggestion that he may have been trying harder in the races that offered an additional million dollars to win.

"We do all we know how to do every single week and when Winston puts up that million dollars -- it's great that they do it and it's exciting for us -- but we really don't change anything that we do based on that million dollars, we really don't," he said

For the record, Burton received only a percentage of the $2 million in bonus money he won last season; he shared the bounty with his car owner, Jack Roush. Most Winston Cup drivers have contracts that call for a 50-50 split of race winnings with their owners, but Burton declined to go into the details of his arrangement with Roush.

"That (bonus money) is considered to be race winnings, just like anything else," Burton said.

* NO RULES CHANGES: NASCAR is not expected to change the rules relating to aerodynamics of its Winston Cup cars before Sunday's CarsDirect.com 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

Following the season-opening Daytona 500, in which Fords swept the top five spots, Chevrolet and Pontiac team owners maintained that Ford had an unfair advantage and NASCAR took all three models to the wind tunnel.

Last week, at North Carolina Speedway, the GM cars dominated the race with a Pontiac (Bobby Labonte) winning, Chevrolet taking second and Pontiac claiming the next two spots.

"We were pretty pleased with last Sunday," Kevin Triplett, NASCAR's director of operations, said. "Everybody was pretty competitive, so we'll go another week and see how it goes.

"Rockingham is different from Daytona, and Vegas is different from Rockingham."

* NO BUSCH LEAGUE: Saturday's Sam's Town 300 Busch Series race at LVMS has drawn entries from 11 Winston Cup drivers.

The full-time Winston Cup drivers who will attempt to qualify for Saturday's 200-lap race are Jeff Burton, Mark Martin, Jeff Gordon, Michael Waltrip, Matt Kenseth, Mike Skinner, Kenny Wallace, Steve Park, Kenny Irwin, Terry Labonte and Joe Nemechek.

Martin, who captured his 41st career Busch victory last weekend at Rockingham, is the defending champion of the Sam's Town 300.

* PROUD PAPA: NASCAR Busch Series driver Mike McLaughlin can rest a little easier this weekend.

McLaughlin's wife, Katie, delivered a healthy 7-pound, 6-ounce baby boy, Michael Thomas McLaughlin, Tuesday night at The University Hospital in Charlotte.

"I can't tell you how excited I am right now about having Max in our lives," the proud father said. "The last thing I wanted to do was get on that airplane for Las Vegas (last night) with the possibility of missing the opportunity of supporting Katie through the birth of our son."

Max is the first child for Mike and Katie, who have been married for 15 months. Katie has two children, Manning and Hannah Gregory, from a previous marriage.