NASCAR WCUP: Burton Looks To Dover Where He Wants To Be Competitive
Posted By Terry CallahanMotorsports Editor, The Auto Channel
May 31, 2001
“I want to get to Dover and be competitive throughout the whole race. I want to finish the race the way we run and I don’t want to be a victim of circumstance. I just want to run good week after week because we’re a team capable of doing that.” - Ward Burton, driver of Caterpillar Dodge
BALDWIN ON THE COCA-COLA 600…
“Although we didn’t have the finish that we had hoped for, I was very pleased with the way we ran. We were competitive all night and we showed that we could run up front, lead laps and contend for the win. We gambled on short pitting because we had fallen back and we thought that if we got an adjustment and a new set of tires that we could gain some valuable track time. It just didn’t work this time. The caution came out a few laps later and we were on the tail end of the lead lap. That really cost us. We got out front on the restart and eventually we got the caution, so we could restart in line. We made our way back to seventh and then we were way too tight. We had to settle for ninth, but at least we knew we were competitive. We need to continue to be competitive. We ran well at California and we ran well last week at Charlotte. Now we can use those finishes as a springboard for the upcoming races.”
BALDWIN ON DOVER…
“We tested this car at Charlotte a couple of weeks ago. We wanted to see how it was going to run before we brought it to Dover. It’s the same car that we raced at Darlington (finished 12th) and Dover (finished fifth). Ward seems to really like it, so we thought we’d give it a try at Dover.
“Dover has been one of those tracks that hasn’t been very forgiving to the CAT team. We had a good run in this race last year and then had another competitive racecar in the fall, but we wrecked early on and never had the chance to see how it was going to be. Ward likes Dover, so I think we should be pretty competitive this week.”
Text provided by H. K. Stoddard
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