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Jeff
Burton prepares himself for Saturday night's race in
Concord, N.C.
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CONCORD, N.C. - Kyle Busch,
Carl Edwards and Jimmie Johnson. Those were the three guys
everyone picked to win the Sprint Cup title.
Nobody gave Jeff Burton a
chance.
And that's exactly how Burton
likes it.
Burton thrust himself into
title contention Saturday night, using savvy pit strategy to
win at Lowe's Motor Speedway and slice into Johnson's points
lead on a night when several contenders lost sight of the
title.
"Nobody's giving us a
chance except for us, and all those guys have a tremendous
amount to lose," Burton said. "We've got nothing
to lose and we're just hanging it out there and seeing what
happens."
Three poor finishes at the
start to the Chase for the championship knocked Busch, the
regular-season points winner, out of contention.
Now Edwards is teetering on
the edge after a 33rd-place finish Saturday night dropped
him to fourth in the standings.
Burton's win, his second of
the season, pushed him two spots in the standings to second.
He trails Johnson by 69 points with five races to go.
"We're just having fun.
We're paying attention to us," Burton said. "We're
not going to get caught up in this. We're paying attention
to it, but we're not going to get caught up in it. If we
don't win the championship, our year is not a failure. We
weren't one of the teams that set that bar up there.
"We're just laying it
out there and having a good time."
Johnson, seeking a third
consecutive title, finished sixth and insisted he never
counted out Burton.
"He's always been on my
radar screen," Johnson said. "He's been doing this
a long time. He knows the tracks. He knows how to race cars.
He's been out there a long time and he knows how to race and
get points."
He proved that Saturday night
with three gas-only pit stops, including fuel only to make
sure he was still out front on the final restart with 34
laps to go.
Kasey Kahne, who swept the
May races at the track, finished second and was followed by
Kurt Busch.
Kyle Busch, the
regular-season points winner, was fourth for his best finish
since the Chase began five weeks ago. Jamie McMurray was
fifth, and Johnson faded over the final few laps to finish
sixth.
Greg Biffle, Jeff Gordon,
Mark Martin and David Ragan rounded out the top 10.
The night was a disaster for
several Chase contenders, including Edwards, who entered the
race second in the standings. He lost power in his Ford
early and finished 33rd to likely lose his shot at his first
Sprint Cup title.
It ended a drama-filled week
for Edwards, who caused a 12-car accident last Sunday in
Talladega then scuffled with Kevin Harvick in the garage
area at Lowe's.
Edwards left fourth in the
standings, 168 behind Johnson.
"It's not good,"
Edwards said. "I think we're still fourth, though, so
there are only three guys in front of us. There's no other
way to put it. It's just a bad week. That's all there is to
it."
Johnson, who was 146 points
out after this race in 2006, said he's not ready to call
Edwards out of it just yet.
"If us top three guys
have problems, they're right back in it," Johnson said.
"It's a decent margin, but we're only halfway through
it. If we go clean, that's going to be really tough for
(Edwards) to overcome. But if we have trouble, he's going to
be right back in it."
Dale Earnhardt Jr. fared
worse than Edwards, finishing 36th after his tire exploded a
lap before he planned to head to pit road to have them
changed. He's 10th in the standings.
Matt Kenseth was caught in a
mid-race accident and finished 41st to drop to 11th in the
standings.
Gordon seemed poised to end
his yearlong losing streak, leading several times for 47
laps despite two hard bounces off the wall very early in the
race. He had to pit just 10 laps into the race to change
tires after hitting the wall, but still managed to make his
way back to the front.
He gave up the lead for an
off-sequence pit stop and never made it back to the front.
He took four tires on the final pit stop, which mired him
too far back into the field to make a run at the leaders
over the final sprint to the finish.
"I'm so bummed I got in
the wall early," said Gordon, who has not won since a
victory at the track last October. "We had to come back
from that and lead this race. I knew we were out of sequence
— it's amazing how great the car is out front and how
terrible when you get six cars back.
"We just got the best
thing we could out of it there at the end and I'm very
happy."
Johnson was not.
He thought he had a shot at
winning the race, but his late fade had him aggravated after
the finish.
"We were junk at the
end," he said. "I tried to get up there. Took a
lot of risk tonight, tried to get as many points as I could.
Tried to hang with (Burton) and get by him, damn near threw
it away a couple of times. The last third of the race we got
out in left field and couldn't get it back."
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