Jeff Burton hopes to excel again in LV race Sunday

Wednesday, Feb. 27, 2002 | 10:29 a.m.

Jeff Burton learned this week of one of the advantages of winning the Daytona 500.

The only problem is, he has yet to win the Daytona 500.

Shortly after his older brother, Ward, won the coveted season-opening NASCAR Winston Cup race, Jeff Burton was sitting in a restaurant when a fan mistook him for his brother.

"I got a free lunch out of it," Burton said. "Somebody thought I was Ward in a restaurant the other day so they bought my lunch for me, so that was cool."

Although Burton said he was thrilled for his brother's victory in the Great American Race, he couldn't resist throwing a friendly jab at Ward.

"Winning the Daytona 500, obviously, is huge and to have one of us that has won it is great -- unfortunately, the wrong one won," Burton joked. "Short of that, it was perfect.

"There are not many families in the country that can say they won a Daytona 500. I certainly don't want to take credit for something that I didn't do, but every now and then you want people to know you're somebody's brother and (this) would be one of the cases."

Although he has yet to win a Daytona 500 in his eight-year Winston Cup career, Burton certainly has mastered the 1.5-mile oval at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. In four Winston Cup races here, Burton has two wins and a second place and he also won the 2000 Busch Series race at LVMS. His victory in the rain-shortened Winston Cup race here in 2000 also earned him a $1 million bonus from series sponsor R.J. Reynolds -- the third time in his career he won the bonus.

Burton again will be one of five drivers eligible for the Winston "No Bull 5" bonus in Sunday's UAW-DaimlerChrysler 400, but he said the lure of a million-dollar bonus doesn't give him any more incentive to win the race.

"We really don't prepare any different because of the No Bull race -- we put in every bit of effort we know how to put in for every race (because) they all pay the same amount of points," he said. "There would be something wrong with our program if we tried to step it up just because somebody was paying more money.

"But (the bonus) adds a lot of excitement to it."

Burton is at a loss to explain why he has done so well in Las Vegas and dismissed the notion that the flat track here suits his driving style, as some have suggested.

"To be honest, I don't (know how to explain it) and I don't even want to try to explain it because I don't understand it," said Burton, who is fifth in points after a 12th-place finish at Daytona and a sixth place last weekend at Rockingham. "I've got this stigma about me that I'm a flat-track driver but if you go back and look a couple of years ago, I got the most amount of points on superspeedways.

"I like the racetrack -- but most everybody does like the racetrack. I'm comfortable there and I immediately liked the racetrack the first time I went there and I think that means a lot."

The fact that LVMS is not a single-groove track adds to Burton's comfort level, he said.

"There are several different grooves you can run on and I'm a driver that I don't care if I run low or I run in the middle or I run high, I just don't care; I want to run wherever the track is the fastest," Burton said.

"Some drivers want to just run on the bottom or they just want to run up higher on the racetrack and I think I'm a little more versatile than some -- not many -- at running at different places on the racetrack and maybe that has been advantageous to me."

While Burton may be at a loss to explain his success here, his crew chief Frankie Stoddard believes he has the answer.

"I guess we've got a good driver," Stoddard said. "Jeff was real comfortable with the racetrack from the first time we ever went there so -- other than last year -- it has been fairly easy to go out there and run well."

One day after announcing he would field the unsponsored No. 33 Chevrolet for Mike Wallace in Sunday's Winston Cup race at LVMS, team owner Andy Petree decided to withdraw the car.

"A couple of things came up early this week that we weren't anticipating on the sponsorship side and because of new needs we have with the crew and team, we just figure we'll do better working in the shop this week," Petree said Tuesday.

Andy Petree Racing will continue to field the No. 55 Schneider Electric Chevrolet with driver Bobby Hamilton.