I think Burton seems like a good guy but he has too much to say sometimes. Seems to be the other guys fault every time something doesn't go his way.
Headline - Jeff Burton calls racing at Sonoma ‘horrendous,’ says Sprint Cup Series is turning into a demolition derby - scenedaily.com
http://www.scenedaily.com/news/articles/sprintcupseries/Jeff_Burton...
LOUDON, N.H. – Veteran driver Jeff Burton lashed out at his Sprint Cup Series peers Friday over their performance during the final laps
last week at Infineon Raceway, saying the driving and late-race contact
was “horrendous” and “ridiculous.”
Burton was one of the victims when Marcos Ambrose spun him while trying to get back to the front after Ambrose lost the lead
with seven laps remaining when he accidentally stalled his car on the
track. Ambrose tried to call Burton this week to apologize. Burton said
he understood Ambrose’s motive and frustration at the end of the race
but doesn’t understand why the racing overall was so rough late in the
event.
For Burton, it was NASCAR’s “boys have at it” mantra taken to an extreme.
“The last 10 laps of that race, it didn’t look like we were the best drivers in this country,” Burton said Friday prior to
practice at New Hampshire Motor Speedway. “It looked like we were some
of the worst drivers in this country.
“It’s just ridiculous. … That race has just turned into a demolition derby. It had nothing to do with road-course and experience.
It has to do with respect. Everybody in this garage knows how to use
the brake pedal and use the throttle and use the steering wheel and
chose not to do it correctly because it was in their best interest to
run over the guy in front of them, or they were trying really hard not
to get run over from behind.”
Not all drivers agreed with Burton.
“It was just good racing, honestly,” said his Richard Childress Racing teammate Kevin Harvick, who stayed out of trouble at
Infineon three weeks after making contact with Joey Logano at Pocono.
“It was probably one of the most exciting road-course races that I’ve
watched. … I went back and watched the race and it looked like the
majority of them had the No. 24 [of Jeff Gordon] involved, and I saw the
No. 20 [of Logano] get dumped again for running into the side of
somebody, so that one hasn’t changed.”
At one point late in the race, Burton got into Mark Martin during a three-wide battle. Martin brushed it off as just the nature of racing in 2010.
“It wasn’t just last week,” Martin said. “It happens all the time. [Respect] is getting worse mostly because the nature of our
racing and the growth of the sport. You wouldn’t be able to keep a job
if you raced 20 years ago and you wrecked as many cars as you wreck
today.”
Burton said he likes aggressive racing but not disrespect.
“The respect shown last week from driver to driver was completely unacceptable,” he said. “If our sport’s going to become that,
then we need to change that from racing to demolition cars. … It takes
skill to race and not wreck somebody. It takes zero skill to run over
the top of anybody.”
Two-time Cup champion Tony Stewart agreed with Burton: “It was absurd. … I don’t know if there was something in the air last week. It was absolutely out of control.”
It was not a surprise which drivers were involved in the rough driving, Burton said, with the pressure to get into the 12-driver
Chase For The Sprint Cup mounting. There are now 10 races left before
that field is set.
“It’s not a coincidence that a lot of the people that are racing to get in the Chase were involved in the situations,” Burton said. “It’s an extremely competitive sport and there’s a lot at stake.”
Martin said that, at times, he’s in a bind because everyone around him is racing so hard and a driver can’t let up. It’s obviously different than when he started in the 1980s.
“The racing 20 or 25 years ago was about the sport,” Martin said. “It wasn’t really about the thrill. It was about being part
of something that you loved. It was a lot smaller, less entertainment
oriented. If you weren’t one of the top teams, you had to survive. You
couldn’t afford to go out there and wreck these things every week.”
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