Jeff Burton: This Winner Can Sleep At Night An Opinion

We’ve all heard the phrase “Nice guys finish last” so often that the words have been accepted into the realm of conventional wisdom.

Jeff Burton took a lot of flak for being ‘too nice’ after his runner-up finish in the Food City 500 at Bristol last month. Many felt that Jeff Burton, who got a fender under leader and eventual race winner Kyle Busch after the final restart, should have spun Kyle Busch to win the race. That’s not Jeff Burton’s style.

"I have a lot of respect for Kyle," Jeff Burton said after the Bristol race. "He's a really hard racer. He gives 100 percent. He's always driven me clean, and that's what I did with him."

As if to answer his critics, Jeff Burton’s racing philosophy was on display again last Sunday at Texas Motor Speedway in another exhilarating battle to the wire, this time against former teammate Matt Kenseth.

Race leader Matt Kenseth held off a hard charging Jeff Burton time and time again in the final fifteen laps, until Jeff Burton finally got the run he needed to complete the pass on the final lap, nipping Matt Kenseth to the finish line by .410 of a second. With the win, Jeff Burton’s first of the Nextel Cup season, the driver became the first repeat winner at Texas.

“Matt’s a heck of a driver,” Jeff Burton said after exiting his car in victory lane. “We were quite a bit faster than he was, he held me off for fifteen laps that’s just how good he is… we were really good on long runs, we got beat up on short runs, but we got just what we needed (a long run),and it really worked out for us.”

It’s easy to slap the Mr. Nice Guy label on Jeff Burton, and away from the track the easy-going Virginian is by all accounts just that. But behind the wheel of a race car the words smart, fair and sporting suit him much better.

There are always going to be some fans that can’t enjoy a race which does not feature aggressive bumping and grinding, but they represent a small minority. What most fans hunger for is the kind of hard, side-by-side racing witnessed at Texas Motor Speedway last Sunday. Jeff Burton and Matt Kenseth, both driving like they stole it, yet holding their lines and giving each other plenty of room. Passion, drama, class, sportsmanship -- their fierce duel in the closing laps represented everything a race should be -- generating the kind of pulse-pounding excitement that wins over casual race fans and reminds existing fans just what it is they love so much about this sport.

Jeff Burton will be winning a lot more races, but he’ll be doing it his way. He refuses to let the Mr. Nice Guy comments get under his skin. Jeff Burton knows that in the end, the success you achieve by staying true to yourself is the only kind that matters.

~ "In my opinion, if you have to wreck someone to win a race, then you really didn't win." ~ Jeff Burton

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