Nascar

04.11.02
Day Five
Floating it In

Jeff Burton kissed his wife and strapped himself into his racecar. The drivers fired up their engines, and the Coca-Cola 600, NASCAR's longest race, was under way. It was the Sunday evening of Memorial Day weekend, 2001.

Burton was starting 18th, but he was in no hurry to seek the front. At 600 miles, the race would punish both men and machines, and his crew had configured his car to run best when the sun was setting, the track was cooling, and tire grip was changing. If he held his own at the beginning, Burton reasoned, he would be in position to challenge for the lead when it counted.

The early going at Lowe's Motor Speedway, near Charlotte, N.C., was rough. Tony Stewart spun out on just the second lap, and nine laps later, a rookie slammed into the wall, wrecking his car and ending his evening. But Burton escaped involvement, and by lap 81, he was running in 10th place.

"Great pace, Jeff," radioed Frank Stoddard, Burton's crew chief. "You're doing a hell of a job."

Unlike during many of his races earlier in the season, Burton liked how his car was handling. It was not one of Jack Roush's new machines, but a three-year-old vehicle that Burton had raced to victory at Las Vegas and New Hampshire and that the No. 99 CITGO Ford Taurus crew now hauled around as its backup car. Burton hoped it would return him to the edge.

By lap 92, Burton had reached ninth place. Five laps later, he took eighth.

"Good job," Stoddard said. "It's pretty to watch."

RACECAR SPONSOR CITGO sees Roush Racing and Jeff Burton, being interviewed, as a good investment even when the team falters, as long as the media focuses on them. View today's slideshow View today's gallery: Crews The crew's view

Burton's team had won the 2000 World Pit Crew Championship, a contest judged on precision and speed and it was delivering prize-worthy service now. Into lap 160, two-fifths of the way through the race, Burton remained in the top 10 -- as high as fourth at one point. Burton's men smiled. Watching the television in their pit stall, they could see the No. 99 car on the live broadcast.

"They're showing the car," Stoddard radioed to Burton. "I ain't seen that in a long time, baby."

Burton's men weren't the only ones smiling. At home in Tulsa, Okla., W.A. DeVore, the senior vice president of marketing for CITGO, was savoring Burton's run. DeVore had been instrumental in getting his company's name on Burton's car, but so far this year, his multimillion-dollar investment had failed to deliver as expected. Like other corporations, CITGO measures the worth of a sponsorship in part on the benefits that employees and customers derive from being able to call a driver theirs -- the star value.

Of greater importance, however, is mention of the driver in the media, which CITGO tracked through a market-research firm. The data could be used to calculate if CITGO had gotten its money's worth, or would have been better off buying more traditional advertising. "We look at sponsorship like we would any other investment," DeVore said, "and that is what kind of return do we get? When you're running up front, you're winning, and you have a well-known driver, that just adds value. Winning is what it's all about."

DeVore did not consider the first third of the season a total loss. Not only Burton, but all of Roush Racing was faltering, and that was major news in NASCAR. "Because of Roush Racing and Jeff Burton," DeVore said, "the value was still there because the media focus was on them for not winning."

Nonetheless, a win would be welcome in the executive suite at CITGO's Tulsa headquarters, and it would give DeVore a break from the talk around the water cooler on Monday mornings.

"Can't you pick a driver?" colleagues now joked.

For Jeff Burton, race day began when he and his wife, Kim, rode a helicopter from their home to the track. Burton spoke at the Coca-Cola hospitality tent, then went to his hauler, where Jack Roush, who had delivered a box of Krispy Kreme doughnuts to all of his teams, joined him. Burton's television was tuned to the Indianapolis 500, in progress some 430 miles away. Engines built by Roush powered three of the cars in that race, including one owned by A.J. Foyt.

Roush left Burton's hauler, and the driver received a visitor: Edsel Ford II, a great-grandson of Henry Ford and a longtime racing fan and admirer of Roush, and now of Burton. Burton explained his frustration in reclaiming his edge, and he told Ford that part of the problem seemed to be his difficulty in adjusting to a new, harder type of tire that NASCAR required on its Winston Cup cars. Goodyear manufactured the tires.

"The new tire doesn't talk to me like the old one did," Burton said. "This hasn't been our year."

Indeed, it hadn't been. Most of Burton's cars still didn't handle to his satisfaction, and he and Stoddard still couldn't find a solution.

"When you are on top of the game," he said, "and the thing doesn't do what it's supposed to be doing, you know why; you can put your finger on it very quickly. And when you don't have that, you end up doing a lot of guessing. We're just a little confused right now. We aren't as in tune to the car."

Burton's pride hurt. No competitor had openly ridiculed him, but he suspected some were snickering behind his back. "Part of competition is driving your competition into the ground," he said. "I know that there's some people out there that find this humorous -- or find this gratifying." Asked how he coped, Burton laughed and said: "You seek solace where you can!"

But more than humor sustained him. A fan of many sports, Burton knew that sometimes competition goes in cycles, for reasons that defy explanation -- or ready correction. "I've watched golfers that couldn't win for a long time," he said. "I've watched basketball teams, football teams, that just go through periods where you get on the wrong side of things."

Burton needed to look no further than professional baseball for an example. After leading his team with a 3.50 ERA and 194 strikeouts in the 2000 season, St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Rick Ankiel had seemingly lost his ability to even get the ball over home plate by the 2000 playoffs, when he threw nine wild pitches in four innings. The pitcher's 2001 spring training had proved equally embarrassing, and he began the 2001 season with a 7.13 ERA and 25 walks in 24 innings. The Cardinals demoted the pitcher on May 11 to the club's Triple-A team in Memphis, where he walked 17 men and threw 12 wild pitches, in only 41/3 innings. What made his situation most disturbing was that the young pitcher was physically healthy. The problem was inside his head, a part of the body that follows different rules than muscles or bones.

The situation, of course, was hardly so dire for Burton -- at least, not yet. As he, Stoddard, and the rest of the crew labored to right their woes, Burton took satisfaction in everyone's morale. So far, team chemistry had not dissolved in the disappointment. "I'm real proud of my team for not freaking out," the driver said. "And I've handled this better than I ever imagined I would. Now, maybe I'm just not handling it -- so I think I am. But I am telling you, and . . . this is the truth, I haven't lost sleep. I haven't gone home and yelled at my wife. Frank and I haven't got at each other's throats."

Burton now had virtually no chance of winning the Winston Cup championship; 25th in the standings, he was 524 points behind leader Dale Jarrett, a deficit that would all but require divine intervention to overcome. His dream of buying a yacht seemed a long way off.

Even making the coveted top 10 would be an achievement now.

AS HE SOUGHT answers to the puzzle of how a driver who had been so dominant for four straight years could wind up where Burton was, Jack Roush had enlisted the help of Frank Stoddard, a native of North Haverhill, a small community in New Hampshire's White Mountains.

Stoddard was not only Burton's crew chief, he was also the driver's confidant and friend. The two men golfed together, bet on the same college basketball games, and shared the same sense of humor. Stoddard's wife, Heidi, managed the public relations for Jeff's brother Ward, who drove the No. 22 Caterpillar car, and Kim Burton was her friend. Every race weekend, the Stoddards and the Burtons parked their motor coaches close to each other.

As the 2001 Coca-Cola 600 approached, Roush told Stoddard to sound Burton out.

"You're the guy that's in Burton's head," Roush said. "Bring back to me your take on what you think you need to do to help your driver." Roush reminded Stoddard that the No. 99 car's performance wasn't Burton's responsibility alone. As crew chief, Stoddard was accountable, too.

Conceivably, Roush told Stoddard, all the No. 99 team needed was extra time on the new Goodyear tires. Bobby Labonte, the defending Winston Cup champion, had also struggled, but now seemed to have found the key. Over the last three points races, he had recorded a 5th-place finish and a 10th, which had advanced him from 21st to 13th in the Cup standings. If Burton's only problem was a slower adjustment, Roush reasoned, he would benefit by spending some days between Cup races on a track. "Burn up a bunch of tires," Roush said, "and see if you can get the feel that will put him back in the position of being able to make the judgments he needs to."

Beyond tires, Roush wanted Stoddard's take on Burton's frame of mind.

"Dale Earnhardt was killed and it was clear that it was an accident that should have been survivable," Roush said. "And Jeff got himself . . . in the middle of the firestorm of the safety issues of what NASCAR might do and what they weren't doing and what the drivers could do and how they would go forward. Instead of focusing on making his car better every week, he had his head in other places."

JEFF BURTON'S CREW won the 2000 World Pit Crew Championship, a contest that judges precision and speed. Its pit stops are still faster than those of most other drivers. View today's slideshow View today's gallery: Crews The crew's view

"Get in there and piss Burton off if you need to," Roush advised Stoddard. "Challenge him, argue with him, do something to try to really unearth any issue or any problem that's not on the surface."

If Stoddard thought that it was warranted, Roush would even recommend that Burton see a sports psychologist.

As the halfway point of the Coca-Cola 600 neared and the lights came on, the track temperature had fallen by more than 20 degrees from the 114 degrees at the race's start -- a change that increased speed. All of the Roush drivers were now running in the top 10, with Burton, in fourth, the best.

"We're in great shape here," Stoddard radioed. "We're sitting in the catbird seat now."

Laughing, Burton replied: "I appreciate you trying to make me feel better!"

A few laps later, coming off a pit stop, Burton took first place.

"Take care of it, baby," Stoddard said. "Your lap times look real nice -- just float it in."

Stoddard wasn't being poetic. He referred to an issue that he and Burton had discussed before the race: the driver's tendency to extend his straight runs, which sent him too deeply into the speedway's corners, pushing him up the banking and slowing him down. He lost only a fraction of a second a lap that way, but over 400 laps, saving those fractions could add up to a win. Afraid that the rhythm of such a long race would lull him into forgetting to ease into the corners -- to float it in -- the driver had asked his crew chief for periodic reminders.

"Nice and smooth," Stoddard kept on. "Float it in for me."

Burton did, maintaining his lead for almost 70 laps. But farther back, Bobby Labonte was on the move.

Labonte had started 24th, but like Burton in his No. 99 CITGO Ford, he was pleased with his No. 18 Interstate Batteries Pontiac. Labonte's momentum concerned Stoddard. Labonte wanted his first win of the year as badly as Burton wanted his, and the NASCAR computer showed that he was the only driver near the front of the pack who was gaining on Burton's No. 99.

"Eighteen car took over second," Stoddard informed Burton on lap 225. Burton could see Labonte in his rearview mirror, two seconds behind.

Nine laps later, Labonte had narrowed the gap to barely a second.

"You've started to break even with the 18," Stoddard said. "Just do your deal." But rounding Turns Three and Four 13 laps farther on, Labonte pressed past Burton on the outside. "Just ride with the 18," Stoddard advised. "Just keep floating it in. Just keep doing your deal."

A three-car wreck minutes later drew a caution flag, and gave Burton the chance to return to his pit for fuel and fresh tires. Burton lacked an appetite, but knowing that nourishment would help sustain him, he asked a crew member to hand him a high-protein snack bar. But Burton couldn't fit the bar under his helmet shield, and it dropped to the floor of his car. There went supper.

Burton came off his stop with the lead, but Labonte soon snatched it back. And a second threat loomed: Dale Jarrett was closing in on Burton's rear bumper. A bad crash during qualifying had forced Jarrett to use a provisional and start 37th, in his backup car. His charge to the front was all the more remarkable in light of the injury he had suffered in that crash. Jarrett tore a rib muscle. Unable to take an analgesic without endangering himself and others, he was racing in unmitigated pain.

As the race entered its final 100 laps, Labonte increased his lead over Burton to almost eight seconds, a formidable advantage, but Stoddard remained reassuring. "Remember we started a little bit loose on the last run and then it came to you," he said. "It's going to come to you again."

Stoddard proved a prophet. Burton slowly cut into Labonte's lead. But he lost ground on the next pit stop, and was in sixth place on lap 335.

Then, as often happens in racing, one driver's bad luck became another driver's lucky break. Battling Jerry Nadeau to keep the lead, Labonte spun out. The caution flag flew, and when green-flag racing resumed three laps later, Burton once again was in front.

By now, the drivers had gone some 500 miles, greater than the distance from New York to Detroit. The race was taking its toll.

Victims of accidents or engine failure, several veterans and rookies were out of the race. Jeff Gordon limped on after a collision on pit road and a penalty; veteran Johnny Benson had survived running out of gas, but he, too, was out of contention. So was veteran Mike Skinner, who had lost the second and third gears of his transmission.

Burton was in the zone, a place where the best racers thrive. The feeling is not what an amateur might expect.

The novice racer achieving high speed the first time typically experiences the human body's instinctive response to danger -- the response of an everyday person riding a roller coaster. The body enters what is known as the flight-or-fight mode, which Hans Selye, the Austrian-born Canadian doctor who first studied it, called the General Adaptation Syndrome. Having perceived danger, the brain initiates a complex reaction involving stimulation of the adrenal glands, which release the hormone adrenaline (also known as epinephrine). The beat and strength of the heart increase; the lungs draw in more air through deeper breathing; blood is shunted to the muscles; energy-sustaining blood sugar rises; the pupils dilate; the hairs stand on end; the palms sweat; and the clotting time of blood falls. All of this is an ancient mechanism designed by nature to help a person swiftly escape danger -- or stay and defeat it.

Adrenaline hooks many young drivers, but as they advance toward professional careers, the rush fades. Useful when battling saber-toothed tigers, it is counterproductive when attempting to control almost two tons of metal moving at nearly a third the speed of sound. Burton and the other drivers in the Coca-Cola 600 had indeed undergone physiological changes since strapping themselves in, but they did not result from the release of adrenaline.

Rather, their bodies, trained by their minds and by their many hours behind the wheel, had entered what the sports doctors call a state of arousal -- the zone. Pulse and respiration had increased along with perspiration, but these were responses to the G forces that drivers experience rounding turns, from the heat of the cockpit, and from the exertion of steering, lessened since the advent of power steering in stock cars, but a factor nonetheless. Drivers in the zone find their ability to concentrate markedly improved, their reflexes swifter, their thinking clearer, and their eyesight, already sharp, even sharper. Some begin to approach or achieve a feeling of invincibility.

Drivers in the zone can achieve maximum performance -- can reach the edge -- only when they connect deeply with their machines. And their vehicles have to be in optimal condition, which is where design, construction, setup, and tires come into play.

But it isn't the zone that motivates a professional racecar driver. It is the winning.

Some drivers, including Burton, claim to rarely or never experience euphoria when they win, only great pleasure; what these drivers crave from racing is the opportunity to try to beat others. "I don't do this 'cause I like going in circles," Burton said. "I don't do it because I love the smell of rubber and I love shifting gears. That's not what it's about for me. What it's about for me is: Let's go see if we can do it better than everyone else."

But other drivers speak of the nearly indescribable bliss they feel when they race exceptionally well and win. Research in this scantly studied field suggests it results in part from the release of endorphins, which have qualities remarkably similar to morphine, and produce effects such as a runner's high. Produced in the pituitary gland, endorphins are a response to stressful, sustained exertion, such as that the body endures driving a long automobile race or competing in a marathon. But losing after such exertion is not blissful, and so something else, as yet unquantified, is involved.

Whatever the precise mechanism, the exhilaration of winning at speed becomes a powerful addiction for many racecar drivers, compelling them even through bankruptcy, injury, sustained defeat, and advancing age. "It feels so good it's unbelievable," 61-year-old drag-racer Eddie Hill told a Texas newspaper. "It's extremely habit-forming, and incurable. You can cure people of all kinds of addictions, but you can't cure anybody of this."

Said Mark Martin: "I don't know what it is, and I don't care what it is. It just feels good, and it lasts for quite a while, like all evening and into the next morning -- until you go out, and somebody's quicker than you are. When I'm the fastest, it's fun for me; if I've got a chance to be the fastest, I'll walk in snow barefooted for one hundred miles."

As the Coca-Cola 600 wound down and the No. 99 maintained the lead, Jack Roush departed Mark Martin's pit stall, where he ordinarily watched a race, for Jeff Burton's.

Roush couldn't remember the last time he had been so tense.

Rarely one to express his feelings, he had kept his disappointment in Burton so far this year to himself, but inside, he hurt. As early as Atlanta, when Burton finished 30th and dropped to 38th in the standings, Roush had realized that a title in 2001 was probably out of the question. "Instead of looking at his car as being a car that was expected to win a championship, or to be certainly in contention for a championship," Roush said, his hopes had dwindled to wondering if Burton would ever win again. "That's a terrible swing in emotion and expectation," Roush said, "just grief, almost."

Now, with victory in sight, Roush almost couldn't bear to watch his driver, for anything could still happen -- a tire could blow, a valve spring fail, a competitor wreck and knock out an innocent racer. "The thought of being able to turn his year around," Roush said, "and get that kind of good news going back to the sponsor, and good news for his fans, and good news for him and for everybody that worked for the program, I just couldn't stand it! I wanted to be fishing -- anyplace else but right there."

But Roush did watch, as Stoddard continued to talk Burton home.

"Get in your comfort level," the crew chief said. "Just float it in. Let it come to you. Let it do what it needs to do. Don't push it."

With fewer than 20 laps left, Burton came up on lapped traffic -- cars directly ahead that were a lap or more down. Lapped traffic always presents a headache. Threading through it is hazardous, and it often slows the leader, which can allow cars behind to gain. Some lapped drivers will move aside -- another day, they will expect the favor to be returned -- but others, perhaps bearing a grudge, or just being ornery, will be deliberately obstructive. Stoddard instructed spotter Chris Farrell to see if he could negotiate with the spotters for the lapped drivers blocking Burton's way. A quick series of radio discussions ensued, and a deal was struck. The lapped cars moved aside, and Burton roared on through.

Burton's pit stall was becoming crowded with reporters and cameramen, many of whom were focused on Kim Burton, who was next to Stoddard atop the pit cart. A tear rolled down Kim's face, and she alternated between watching the race and burying her face in her hands. A win tonight would be worth a quarter of a million dollars, but money wasn't Kim's foremost concern: her husband visiting Victory Lane for the first time since last year was. She knew he hadn't forgotten how to win, but she knew how important it was to him to demonstrate it again to the world.

The field shifted again. Tony Stewart had recovered from his early spinout and now he took third. Kevin Harvick claimed second. Lap after lap, Stoddard counted off Burton's advantage over Harvick: 3.99, 4.40, 3.98 seconds. After almost 41/2 hours of racing, Burton remained in the zone.

"Your lap times look awesome," Stoddard said. "Just float it in."

Four laps from the checkered flag, Stoddard began to worry about running out of gas. His calculations indicated Burton would be able to finish with about three-tenths of a gallon remaining, but gas math was always dicey, as Johnny Benson had been reminded tonight. "Easy on your gas pedal just to be sure," Stoddard told Burton.

Kim Burton was crying now, and the pit stall was so packed it was difficult to move. The white flag flew, and Burton crossed the finish line 3.19 seconds ahead of Harvick, a commanding margin.

"I can't believe it!" Stoddard shouted. "We won the Coca-Cola 600 for the second time! I love you! We got the confidence back tonight!"

Burton's crew exploded in high-fives and hugs, then dashed across the speedway to the grandstand fences, which they scaled like crazed apes. As Burton drove his car to the section of track that served as Victory Lane, Jack Roush was overjoyed. Winning put the feeling of something good in an owner's veins, too. "It's not the cure," he said as he headed to the celebration, "but it certainly gives hope that we'll be able to come back!"

BURTON PARKED his racecar and sprayed a bottle of Coke everywhere as he climbed out and jumped onto the roof. With confetti showering down and fireworks lighting up the sky, he made his way through the throng to the stage, where Kim embraced him, and he received his trophy and congratulations from Roush, Miss Winston, and Lug Nut, the speedway's goofy mascot. Reporters interviewed Burton live on radio and TV, and then he posed with his wife, his owner, and his crew for photographs. Finally, he posed alone, wearing a succession of hats bearing the names of CITGO, Ford, Goodyear, and dozens of other corporations. This was payday for them, too.

The ceremony lasted more than an hour. Escorted by the police, Burton and his entourage left the stage and traveled through the stands, where drunk and weary spectators lingered amidst a mess of chicken bones and beer cans, to the press box high above the speedway. Reporters were primarily interested in Burton, but Roush Racing had made a good night of it all around: Mark Martin had finished 4th, Busch 12th, and Kenseth 18th. The headlines this week would be flattering, the talk in the chatrooms kindly.

Burton praised the dedication of his crew through the season so far, then predicted that despite tonight's win, further difficulties probably loomed. "This doesn't mean everything is great and everything is lovely," he said. "We've got to keep fighting and keep working." Still, Burton allowed himself a moment of glory. Asked to describe his feelings as he crossed the finish line, he said: "I don't want to sound facetious or cocky or anything else, but it felt normal. Winning is what Roush Racing is all about."

Handed the microphone, Jack Roush first praised his motors. Counting Elliott Sadler's, all five of them had excelled. "We ran 3,000 miles on our engines here tonight and none of them had a problem," Roush said. Then he talked about the season. "We just haven't had things go our way this year," he said. "The bright spot almost to this point has been how well Kurt Busch, with one year in the Truck program, has done acclimating himself to our program and to Winston Cup."

The reporters wrapped up their questions. Burton went onto the roof for another live TV interview, then visited some of the speedway's private clubs, where members had watched the race over lobster and champagne. It was past midnight when Burton got back to his hauler.

Burton's elation faded as the feeling in his veins subsided. Next weekend, he would race at Dover Downs International Speedway in Delaware, where a blown tire last fall had ended his championship run against Labonte and Dale Earnhardt. Beyond Dover, two dozen more races awaited in a season that continued to confound.

"We never take a lot of time to enjoy these things, and maybe we should," Burton said as he and Stoddard changed into their street clothes. "I'm just more worried about what we do next week and the week after."