Nascar

04.09.02
Day Three
The Racer's Edge

Dale Earnhardt's death had yet to be announced when Jeff and Kim Burton left Daytona International Speedway the evening of Feb. 18, 2001. They were crossing the track when a flatbed tow truck carrying Earnhardt's wasted vehicle passed by. A tarpaulin covered the car.

Jeff and Kim exchanged looks. Kim was ashen.

"Don't assume that means the worst," Jeff told his wife. Like most who had seen the last-lap accident, Burton still believed that Earnhardt had only been injured -- that the NASCAR story of the week would be The Intimidator rising heroically from his hospital bed to drive in the following week's race, the Dura Lube 400 at Rockingham, N.C.

Burton kept that belief as he flew home to Charlotte, N.C., but when his jet landed, he learned the truth. He felt as if he'd been punched. Earnhardt wasn't just another driver, he was American auto racing's biggest star, the icon who had helped transform NASCAR into a national sensation. His death would make the front page of The New York Times and most other major newspapers, and Time magazine would put him on its cover.

In the 26 years that he had been racing, Burton, 33, had never witnessed anything like it.

"A person of that stature you just don't think is going to be killed," he said. "It's a mental game that I think racecar drivers play with themselves. When a young guy gets killed, it's `Well, he wasn't strong,' `He didn't know enough about this,' and `I wouldn't have done that.' When it happens to him . . . it hits home."

Jeff was a fair-skinned, slight boy with an impish humor and an evident intelligence -- just not of the bookish sort. He despised high school, although he would manage to graduate despite scorning homework and regularly skipping classes to mess around with his friends.

"Because my father was successful in business," he said, "all of us Burton boys had a stigma. You know, we were the rich kids in town. I think my teachers probably looked at me as if I was lazy, I was rich, that kind of thing."

The oldest Burton boy, Ward, was almost six years older than Jeff, too old to be a childhood buddy. But Jeff was only 21/2 years younger than the middle son, Brian, and they were as close as best friends -- and would remain so into their adult years. "Everyone wanted to be Brian Burton," Jeff said. "He was a good athlete. He was a real nice person. He dated the homecoming queen. He had the best parties. He had a red Trans Am with a Hurst shifter in it, so he was cool 'cause of that, too. He just had it all going on. And he took me with him everywhere."

Jeff was riding with Brian in downtown South Boston one summer day when they passed a girl on a bicycle. She was uncommonly pretty -- a fact Jeff noted when he called out to her.

Kim Browne was a doctor's daughter. She thought: This crazy kook -- who is that?

She discovered a short while later, when Jeff telephoned her at home. "I'm gonna meet you," Jeff said. He did, soon after, at a high school football game.

Kim thought Jeff was funny and cute, and she liked that he traveled with South Boston's in crowd and was 15 and a high school freshman, a year older and a grade ahead of her. Before long, Kim was in love. That did not please Dr. and Mrs. Browne, parents of four girls, Kim the oldest. The Burtons enjoyed a reputation as party boys, and Jeff certainly wasn't bound for Harvard.

JOHN BURTON never raced professionally, but he savored speed.

He drove fast on the highway, and he brought his sons to Winston Cup races at the big tracks in Rockingham and in Darlington, S.C. The boys had yet to reach grammar school when he put them behind the wheel of a tractor -- a lowly form of speed, but for a kid, speed nonetheless. Soon, John had his sons racing go-carts in organized leagues.

Fiercely competitive in golf and tennis, the sports he played, John expected his sons to win. Toward that end, he bought the best carts and equipment, hired a mechanic, and devoted every weekend of the racing season to his new obsession. Ward won state championships, as did Brian and, later, Jeff, who first competed when he was 7. Brian eventually left racing to run the family construction firm and Ward took time off to decide his future, but Jeff stayed with speed, moving from go-carts to stock cars.

He did not progress without rancor at home. John's need to win notwithstanding, Meredith did not want her sons behind the wheel of a stock car, which was faster and more dangerous than a go-cart. Meredith had attended a NASCAR race in 1960 at Darlington, where two mechanics and an inspector died when two cars collided and plowed upside down into the pits. She still carried in her head the image of a body flying through the air.

"I'm not going to let you do that," Meredith said. But John and Jeff prevailed, and the teenager, soon to be an adult, kept racing.

Meanwhile, Jeff's girlfriend, Kim, enrolled as a premedical student at North Carolina State University, but on the eve of her sophomore year, she decided against medicine. She knew firsthand the personal sacrifices a good physician must make, and if she attended medical school and then completed an internship and residency while Jeff raced, she and the man she loved would rarely see each other. "We've always been best friends, and I think if you have that, plus the other attraction, you've got it made," Kim said. So she majored in math and science and became a teacher. If Burton's career stalled, she reasoned, they would need the income.

BANKROLLED IN PART by a $250,000 investment from his father, Burton started racing full-time in NASCAR's Busch Grand National Series in 1989. But even a quarter of a million dollars bought only a limited racing inventory: two cars and three engines, less than half what a top Busch series team carried through a season. Burton finished the year 13th, and failed to win a pole -- the first starting position of a race, which goes to the fastest car in qualifying.

The next year, Burton won his first race, at Martinsville, Va., but 1990 otherwise proved discouraging. Equipment broke, bills mounted, and tempers flared inside the 23-year-old driver's team. He ended the 1990 season in 15th place, with less than $87,000 in winnings. "Physically and mentally, that year just killed me," he said. But speed was a powerful addiction, and Burton was hooked.

Jeff and Kim wed on Feb. 1, 1992, before heading to Daytona, where Jeff was racing in the NAPA Auto Parts 300, the Busch Series counterpart to the Daytona 500. Driving for new sponsors, Burton would persist in Busch Series competition for three more seasons, but his future remained speculative. As in few other sports, success in racing depends on several factors, money primary among them, that are only indirectly related to talent, ambition, and work. Burton didn't know how long he could continue to drive.

Then, Burton got a chance at the big time. His Busch Series performances had caught the attention of Winston Cup owners the Stavola Brothers and they signed him for the 1994 Cup season. Burton failed to win that year. But his 24th-place finish was sufficient to capture the Rookie of the Year title over his brother Ward, who had finally settled on a career in racing, and John Andretti, nephew of legendary racer Mario Andretti. But 1995 would return Jeff Burton to disappointment; he would finish 32nd in the standings.

Burton was already negotiating to race the 1996 season for another owner when his brother Ward called him with word about an opening at Roush Racing. Jack Roush had asked Ward to fill it, but Ward intended to stay with his current owner. "Are you interested?" Ward asked Jeff. "Well, God, yes!" Jeff said. Ward contacted Roush Racing president Geoff Smith, who called Jeff Burton with the details. An offer to drive soon followed.

Burton won no races his first year with Roush, but he won three in 1997, when he placed fourth in the point standings. Four years later, it was little surprise that he began the season as the Winston Cup front-runner. He had contended for the title late into 2000, when he won four times -- including the fall race in New Hampshire in which he led every lap, a feat last accomplished in a Cup race almost a quarter of a century before. Burton drove some of the best cars in all of racing and he had some of the best mechanics, tire changers, and other personnel, headed by one of the best crew chiefs in racing, New Hampshire native Frank Stoddard.

WHEN HIS RACING DAYS are over, Jeff Burton, who already designs racecar chassis, plans to manage the competitive-operations side of Roush Racing. View today's slideshow View today's gallery: Scenes Behind the scenes

It was Burton's mind as much as his driving that distinguished him in the world of automobile racing.

In an era when many drivers forsook candor for cliches when talking to the press, Burton spoke forthrightly, whether on matters of safety, NASCAR rules, or his own performances, good and bad. Unlike many of his peers, who defined themselves strictly by their calling and who planned to race as long as age allowed, Burton viewed himself as a work in progress -- a man whose upbringing left him with conflicting values, and a fancy for grappling with life's complexities.

"When I look at my mom," he said, "the thing I think about is `Do unto others as you'd have done unto you.' That's what she taught us; that's how she lives her life. So from my father, I got this burning desire to compete, and from my mother I got this need for people to respect me. And so that's my makeup. I've got two different things that I've been taught growing up. I'm trying to merge them together."

Burton already played a key role in designing racecar chassis, and someday he expected to manage the competitive-operations side of Roush Racing, an expectation that Jack Roush shared. Sometime after that, he hoped to win election to the U.S. Senate, focusing on education, health-care and family issues. Burton had already chaired a $1-million fundraising campaign for Duke Children's Hospital, where Kim served on the board of directors. "I enjoy being outspoken," the driver said. "I enjoy talking about a subject that I believe in. I should be financially able to do whatever it is I want to do later in life. I have no ulterior motive. I'm really interested to see if you could get into government with no ulterior motive and make a difference."

In the meantime, racing dominated the Burtons' lives. Kim favored designer clothes and diamond rings, and she was well-versed in the social graces. But on race weekends, she claimed a seat next to Frank Stoddard on top of the No. 99's pit cart. Wearing a headset and monitoring a computer, she logged lap times and chronicled radio traffic, later adding her insights to the postrace review. At home, racing was often the topic of conversation.

So, of course, were the children: Kimberle Paige, 5, and Harrison Brian, born in October 2000. Named for Jeff's brother, Harrison Brian had arrived at a momentous time. Uncle Brian and his wife were expecting their first children, twins, only a few months later. But the twins arrived prematurely, and with doctors unable to save them, one died on Christmas Eve and the other on Christmas Day. Jeff stayed with his brother on that Christmas, accompanying him from the hospital to the funeral home, where two tiny caskets were being prepared.

The death of his brother's children gave Jeff another of life's complexities to ponder.

"I do want to be a good father, I do want to be a responsible citizen, and I do want to do all these things. But I also want to be a racecar driver," he said. "Sometimes they don't all mix together. And I've struggled more with that in the last year than I ever have."

Like his fellow drivers, Burton remained in a degree of shock the week between the Daytona 500 and the next race of the 2001 season, the Dura Lube 400 -- the week Earnhardt was buried.

Saying it was what Earnhardt would have wanted, NASCAR president Bill France Jr. decided to proceed with the Dura Lube 400. Officials conducted a tribute to The Intimidator before the start of the race, drivers and crews wore Earnhardt hats, and fans held No. 3 flags and raised three fingers. Spectators and another huge national television audience experienced a moment of horror on the first lap when Dale Earnhardt Jr., traveling at some 150 mph, slammed head-on into the wall. It seemed a virtual replay of his father's deadly accident until Junior, disoriented, but not seriously injured, crawled out of his car.

Steve Park, one of Earnhardt's three drivers, won at Rockingham, providing an emotional ending to the first race of the post-Earnhardt era. But Jack Roush's drivers disappointed their fans. Mark Martin finished 20th, Matt Kenseth 28th, and Kurt Busch 36th, after brushing the wall. "Another rookie day," Busch said.

Jeff Burton could offer no such explanation for his even worse performance. He never wrecked alone anymore, but on lap 121, untouched by anyone, he fishtailed and hit the wall going into Turn One. Losing track position to repairs, he rode out the remainder of the Dura Lube 400 in unfamiliar territory, at the end of the pack. Burton finished 37th.

This was the driver picked by many to be the 2001 Winston Cup champion, the driver Roush believed had the best chance of capturing Roush Racing's first Cup title. Two races into the season, Burton stood 33rd in the points.

Burton blamed himself for the wreck -- not his car, not track conditions, not someone on his crew, as another driver might have. But he could not explain exactly what had happened in that fraction of a second when he slipped from control into catastrophe. He suspected that his relative unfamiliarity with a new type of tire NASCAR had introduced that season might have contributed to his wrecking. Daytona still cast a shadow, as well.

"Earnhardt got killed, and I spent a hard week on that," Burton said as he sat in his hauler on Saturday, March 3, the day before the season's third race, the UAW-Daimler Chrysler 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. "It was a real hard week to get focused, to step in and get your head in the game. And I'm always taking pride in being able to do that. Anything that was going on in my life, [I could] put it behind me when I get to the racetrack. And I don't think I did that last week [at Rockingham]. I'm not saying that's why we got in the wreck, but I wasn't as effective as I needed to be."

Burton had arrived in Las Vegas yearning for a finish that would soften the memory of his first two races in 2001.

"Our year is not over based on Rockingham and Daytona," he said. Yet confidence hardly overwhelmed him that first weekend of March. He had in his head the image of Earnhardt's tarp-draped car; he worried, knowing fate can turn unkind. "I don't like where we are and I'm nervous about going even further," Burton said. "It puts more pressure on us. Every race you have a bad race means you have to have a great one. You never make a bad race up."

Still, if any track was destined to provide a fresh start -- for all of the Roush drivers -- surely it was Las Vegas.

In the three Winston Cup races at the track since it opened, Burton had finished second in one race, and he had won the other two, in 1999 and 2000. Martin had won the inaugural race in 1998, and Kenseth had placed 17th in his first and only Cup appearance at Las Vegas, in 2000, his rookie year. The Roush drivers seemed to have divined the secrets of the gently banked, 1.5-mile oval, which sits across a desert road from Nellis Air Force Base, home of the Thunderbirds, the Air Force's aerial demonstration team, another well-known group of risk-takers. And Las Vegas was also Kurt Busch's hometown.

AS HIS DRIVERS and crews completed their final preparations for the Las Vegas race, Jack Roush expressed optimism regarding the outcome. He considered Busch's performances at Daytona and Rockingham valuable lessons that would serve the rookie well when he visited those tracks later in the season, and he discounted his three other Cup drivers' poor finishes the last two weekends.

"It's not even a bump in the road," Roush said. "If we were breaking our engines, if we were having trouble with our setups and we weren't able to keep from wearing our tires out, if we had horrible fuel economy, those would be things that I would really feel bad about. But we're racing just fine. This business ebbs and flows and it's just fine."

But Las Vegas did not turn out just fine for Roush.

Though Kurt Busch finished 11th, the best run of his young Cup career, and Mark Martin wound up 6th, Matt Kenseth placed 17th, no better than his previous race there. And Burton came in 39th, ahead of just four other drivers, all of whom had crashed or blown engines. (Two former champions dominated Las Vegas: winner Jeff Gordon and runner-up Dale Jarrett.)

Burton's day puzzled everyone, no one more than the driver himself.

For the second week in a row, he spun out -- by himself. He was on lap two when he lost control of his car and smashed into the wall, badly damaging a quarter panel, bumper and frame. Repairs took more than 75 laps, and when Burton returned to the race, he bore little resemblance to the driver who'd won more Cup races than anyone at Las Vegas. Heading home, he had dropped to 36th in the standings. At 33rd, rookie Busch was better.

"I don't know what happened," Burton told reporters. "The car was in the middle of the corner, and it just started coming around. I have no idea what happened because I was even off the gas."

Twice in a row now, Burton had lost his edge.

DALE EARNHARDT fans rejoiced the next weekend at the season's fourth race, the Cracker Barrel 500, on March 11 in Atlanta.

Richard Childress, the owner for whom had Earnhardt had raced, had named 25-year-old Kevin Harvick to succeed The Intimidator. A Busch Grand National racer in 2000, Harvick now had Earnhardt's crew and Earnhardt's cars, which had been painted white and assigned number 29. Atlanta was only Harvick's third Winston Cup race, but he won, by six one-thousandths of a second, roughly a foot, over Jeff Gordon. "I kept praying for Dale to help us out," Childress told reporters after the race. "I know he's somewhere. I can see him with that mustache of his just breaking into a big grin."

With his sudden stardom, Harvick was now Kurt Busch's chief rival for Winston Cup Rookie of the Year. Harvick's Atlanta victory moved him ahead of Busch in that contest, but Busch found reason to be pleased. Although NASCAR officials forced him to start the race last for missing mandatory drivers' introductions (he had misread his schedule), he nonetheless finished 10th. "I had hoped for a top-10 finish at Las Vegas last weekend, but we'll take it today," Busch told reporters. "This team has really come together."

The other Roush teams had not at Atlanta.

After starting 4th, Mark Martin lost his engine and finished 41st. Matt Kenseth's engine also blew, his car caught fire, and he finished 37th. And Jeff Burton finished 30th, after having been penalized for an improper pit stop and hobbled by the partial failure of his engine. He now held 38th in the standings, an almost unbelievable 336 points behind leader Jeff Gordon. Never mind a championship, a finish in the elite top 10 now was in jeopardy.

Burton and Martin were not the only top drivers who seemed to have fallen under a curse. The defending Winston Cup champion, Bobby Labonte, stood 26th in points, and Ward Burton ranked 21st after having placed 10th in 2000. The new season's top 10 included such unlikely contenders as Daytona winner Michael Waltrip, who'd finished the 2000 season in 41st place, and Bill Elliott, who hadn't won a race in almost a decade.

Only half in jest, given the tragedy of Daytona, some writers sought explanations to the 2001 season in the supernatural.

"Every weekend, I look forward to the Winston Cup race with the level of anticipation one might have towards finding a brand-new Twilight Zone episode," wrote a columnist for The Sporting News. "To start, there's the Roush team. I expect that one might find Freddy Krueger lurking in the shadows during a visit to the house that Jack built."

But Roush's misfortunes did not elicit good-natured barbs from all. Like others who live under the media eye, Roush played favorites with the press, agreeably availing himself to reporters he liked, shunning and sometimes ridiculing those he didn't. Whether favoring or disdaining, Roush always spoke with a candor that often gave his public-relations staff fits. For those outside his good graces, here, finally, was an opportunity for payback.

"Those teams have grown accustomed to blowing raspberries at the rest of the suckers who continue to show up on Sundays," a reporter for the CNN/Sports Illustrated Web site wrote after Atlanta. "Jack Roush? The man has finished second or third in owners' points in three of the last five years. So gilded is the name that it was widely believed that Kurt Busch, a 22-year-old kid whom you last saw delivering your Sunday paper, was an automatic contender for the Rookie of the Year award."

The Burtons returned from Atlanta the evening of March 11 on their jet, then drove to their home on the shore of Lake Norman, an exclusive community north of Charlotte where bankers, doctors, lawyers, and many of NASCAR's drivers live.

On the flight, Jeff had sensed his wife's puzzlement. What's going on? Kim's eyes seemed to say.

Now, at home, Kim told Burton to spend some time in the downstairs den, where he displayed his many trophies. "You haven't forgotten how to drive," she said. "You'll figure it out."

Midnight approached, but Burton couldn't unwind. A cable channel was airing 24 hours of Andy Griffith reruns, and he watched, alone, as Kim and the children slept. Dawn neared, the reruns rolled on, and Burton fretted.

Next week, he would race at Darlington, S.C., on a track so perilous that it was known to drivers and fans as The Lady in Black. It was the track where Burton's mother had watched three people die during a Winston Cup race 41 years before.

Burton had enjoyed extraordinary success at Darlington -- two wins, three seconds, never worse than fifth over the previous eight races, a record that had prompted some competitors to call it The Jeff Burton Track. But Las Vegas had proved the folly of using the past to predict the future. Burton worried that he might not even run the race, the Carolina Dodge Dealers 400, to be held on March 18.

The reason was NASCAR's rules of entry, which guarantee the first 36 spots in a Cup race to the 36 fastest drivers in qualifying. The last seven places are filled with so-called provisionals. In essence, it's a way for good drivers to make the race despite an off day in qualifying. Burton had long had the insurance of provisionals, which were awarded according to a convoluted system based in part on the owners' standings. But at 38th in the young season, Burton had precious few provisional points. Drivers with more who qualified poorly could bump him home to Charlotte without racing, a humiliating development that would damage his team's morale.

Burton knew he'd let Jack Roush down, even though Roush had not told him so. "Jack doesn't call me and say, `. . . what's wrong?' " Burton said. "He's letting us fix this. That means a lot to me." They had never discussed it, but the thought had crossed Jack Roush's mind that Burton's life circumstances combined with Earnhardt's death might be among the factors affecting his 2001 season.

Whatever his owner thought, Burton had his own pride to consider. He treasured the respect of his peers, but the season so far had endangered it. "My team and I have put a precedent out there," Burton said. "We've said we're a top-five team. We're going to win races. We're going to be a pain in everybody's butt competitive-wise. It's difficult for me to walk in the garage."

Finally drained, Burton slept -- briefly.

The next morning, a Monday, he visited the race shop, where the mood was somber as Roush's people endeavored to determine how three of the finest motors in the world could have failed on the same day.

Later in the day, Burton visited a boat dealer. Since he was a little boy, boats had fascinated him. One of his favorite childhood pastimes had been thumbing through the advertisements in the back of boating magazines, fantasizing about the yachts for sale. And now, as an adult, he spent some of his spare time designing yacht interiors with the drafting tools he kept in his den. He even looked ahead to the days when his children were grown and he would feel free to circle the world alone in a sailboat.

"I don't want to sound like a brat," Burton said, "but it's been a lifetime dream of mine to have a yacht and to be able to take my family, my parents, my brothers, my wife's family, and spend time with them. I thought I had myself able to do that, and now I'm realizing that I don't. Sometimes it takes a swift kick . . . to make you realize that you're not in that position. And the last four races have been a swift kick."

Expecting a great start to the 2001 season, Burton had finally been negotiating the purchase of a yacht. Kim had relented.

But now, Burton told the dealer, the purchase was off.