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Ward Burton
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NASCAR.COM
With all the manufacturer controversy swirling around Bill Davis Racing and the No. 22 Caterpillar Dodge these days, it only seems appropriate that Ward Burton would just put his head down, mash the pedal and leave the Pocono 500 with a top-10 finish.
Burton finished 8th on Sunday, earning his third top-15 finish in his last four races, clearly showing improvement over the dismal start to his 2003 season where he finished 18th or worst over the first six races.
"I'm very pleased with the way we ran at Pocono. It was a challenge to get the car handling after absolutely no practice in race setup, but we were able to get the No. 22 handling pretty well," said crew chief Frankie Stoddard.
"I feel like with our fuel economy and our pit strategy, we had a very good chance to win that race. And if we hadn't lost fourth gear, I feel like we would have, but I am pleased with an eighth-place finish."
The team now heads to Michigan International Speedway with car No. 66, the same car they ran at Lowe's Motor Speedway for the Coca-Cola 600. Burton started 41st in that race and finished 10th, his second top-10 finish of the season.
"We need to go to Michigan and do the same things we've been doing the past several weeks. With the exception of Dover when we had the heat exchanger fail, we've been running very competitively and getting the finishes we need," stated Burton as he prepares for the Sirius satellite Radio 400.
"We've put together a string of consistent, strong runs since Richmond. We need to continue what we've been doing, getting the car to handle good, not having equipment failures and not wrecking and we'll get back to where we need to be."
Over the past six years, Burton has had mixed results at Michigan. While he has won the pole twice there (June 1998 and August 1999), he also has eight career finishes of 30th or worse to go along with four top 10s.
"We're not going to set our expectations too high," said Burton. "We're just going to keep working on rebuilding the team and making us more consistent every week."
And what are Burton's expectations for Sunday?
"We'll work to get the car decent enough and get the aero and handling good enough to have a solid run and that will produce a good race for us. I like the track; it's fast and there is a lot of room."