NASCAR WCUP: Jeff Burton Qualifying Notes, Talladega

25 April 1999

JEFF BURTON -99- Exide Batteries Taurus -- "We're real excited about where we qualified. We came down here a couple of three weeks ago and we weren't the slowest car here, but we were pretty close. We picked up almost a second and a half compared to where we tested. The guys went home and cut the body off the car and brought the same car back but with a different body on it. The engine department gave us a lot more horsepower to come back here with, so I'm real proud of all the work the guys did because we were way behind. We were really nervous coming down here and the first lap on the track we ran better than we had the whole two days of testing, so we feel pretty good about that." LAST YEAR THREE ROUSH CARS HAD TO TAKE PROVISIONALS HERE, NOW THERE ARE THREE IN THE TOP 10. WHAT'S HAPPENED OVER THE LAST YEAR? "I think a lot of things happened. I think our engine department has really stepped up a lot and gotten us a lot more horsepower. I believe that effort we put in to our bodies to make our bodies a little bit slicker has paid off. Last year we came down to restrictor plate races with cars that weren't very good because we didn't have a whole lot of time to devote to the plate program. We spent all our time on the downforce program. Starting the second half of last year we started to spend some more time on the plate program with the bodies and I think we're starting to see a benefit of that as well as the engine department stepping it up." IS THERE MORE HESITATION THAN NORMAL FOR THIS RACE? "There aren't many races that I wake up on Sunday morning and I'm nervous. I don't mind telling you that Sunday morning at Talladega I wake up and I'm nervous. I'm not real smart, so I don't get nervous very often, but this place makes me nervous. We talk about running up front and being safe, but, man, all those wrecks I see that are big start in the front and they're big because they're in the front and there's nowhere to go. You can't hide from the wreck here. You go to Michigan or Rockingham or Charlotte and, if your car doesn't drive well you just slow down. You can't do that here, so it's wait for the wreck and hope you miss it. Then, if you miss it, you tell everybody how good of a job you did and if you get in it, you tell them you couldn't have avoided it."

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