There’s no way to sugar coat it.
Harrison Burton’s rookie season in the NASCAR Cup Series has been less than stellar.
In the first five races, the 21-year-old driver never finished better than 16th as he wrecked out of the first two and only finished on the lead lap once (Las Vegas Motor Speedway).
However, with six races down and NASCAR back on its home turf in Virginia for the next two weeks, the Wood Brothers Racing driver thinks the No. 21 team took “a step in the right direction” last weekend at Circuit of The Americas, where he finished 17th.
“We’ve had a pretty rough start, there’s no denying that,” Burton said this week. “We’ve had fast cars at times and we’ve had times where we didn’t have the pace that we needed … Getting stage points in both the stages (at COTA) was good, and I felt like being fourth in practice – things like that – we’re starting to show the flashes that we need to show, which is good. It’s a building process and I think everyone at the Wood Brothers and myself understands that this is gonna be a building process.”
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Burton said his team “kind of sold our whole strategy” in order to get much needed stage points.
“Then you get buried in the back for the last stage and it’s so hard to pass through those guys,” Burton said. “Overall, it’s certainly a challenge and it should be a challenge. I think that’s what makes it awesome. I have a lot of things that are going on that I think are good and I’m learning a lot, but also there are those days that can humble you really quick and that’s good.”
When it comes to areas Burton believes he needs to work on, the rookie points to being more aggressive and knowing how important track position is.
Longer races in the Cup Series doesn’t mean he has time to pace himself.
“As soon as the race starts it’s time to go,” Burton said. “It’s easy to say, ‘Oh, I’ve got 500 miles to go. I’ll figure it out.’ Well, if you lose a couple spots those guys that passed you are really smart. They’re really good and they’re hard to pass back, so you end up spending more time trying to pass them than you would trying to move forward.”
The swing through Virginia takes the Cup Series to Richmond Raceway this weekend and Martinsville Speedway after that.
The two short tracks represent the home tracks not just for Wood Brothers Racing, but Burton’s family as well.
“I love short tracks in general and I really am looking forward to the next two,” Burton said. “It’s a really really cool couple weekends for me at two of my favorite racetracks. Last year, I felt like we had the car to win at Richmond in the Xfinity Series, led a bunch of laps and the cautions didn’t fall our way there. I’m kind of hungry to get back there this weekend.”