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NASCAR WCUP: Burton Looks For Fourth Top 10 At Plate Race

12 October 2000

Posted By Terry Callahan
Motorsports Editor, The Auto Channel

"We've been real competitive at the restrictor plate races all year. Obviously the rules are going to throw a little different punch in it for everybody. But, we'll got down there and try to keep our nose clean and see if we can get a top five out of it." - Ward Burton

BALDWIN ON TALLADEGA

"I believe these new rules are going to make the race pretty exciting, pretty entertaining. With these new rule changes nobody is going to be able to loose the draft. There will be more cars bunched up, but you'll probably see more sling shot racing like we did with the trucks at Daytona in February.

"From the working end of it, it has definitely been frustrating for us. We built these cars a different way then what the new rules are calling for. We haven't had much time to figure out the pieces and parts that they (NASCAR) gave us. If we were able to start over and have a couple of months to build the cars, we would probably have built them completely different then the way we have them now. That's pretty much equal footing for everyone. Some people will obviously adapt better with the new changes than others and some will complain about them and never get their cars right.

"I don't believe there will be a huge difference between all the different manufacturers. There were some people that said the Chevy's would have an advantage, but we cut our spoiler off in the wind tunnel and never saw much of a difference in the numbers. We took this car to the wind tunnel with the new changes and it made a significant difference in downforce. It made about 100 counts of more drag on the car than the way we raced it here in April, but everybody will have that much more drag too."

FAST FACTS

The team returns to Talladega Superspeedway with the same car that has competed in all restrictor plate races in 2000. It has three top-10 finishes at Daytona (6), Talladega (10) and Daytona (7).

Text Provided By Heidi Stoddard

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