This Time, Racing Luck Turns Bad for Burton

FONTANA — Dan Gurney, in his Formula One days, called motor racing “the cruel sport.”

It is that, and if Jeff Burton didn’t know it before, he knows it now, after getting a strong dose of wrong-way racing luck Sunday in the California 500 for Winston Cup stock cars at California Speedway. But, of course, a driver as experienced as Burton knows all about racing luck. And how cruel it can be.

Racing luck? The phrase itself is a strong indicator of the sport’s capricious nature. Ever hear anyone talking about football luck? Or basketball luck. Boxing luck?

“Racing luck” is the phrase racers use for things that affect the outcome of any given race but can’t really be explained. Or blamed on somebody.

Such as why, when both needed to make green-flag pit stops as they were passing the lead back and forth, Burton lost a lap to Jeff Gordon, who used his bit of right-way racing luck to its best advantage and won the race.

There was nothing either man, or his crew, did right or wrong. It was just racing luck, and here’s how it unfolded:

For most of the first 125 laps of the 250-lap race, either Burton in his Ford Taurus, or Gordon, in his Chevrolet Monte Carlo, led. And whichever of them wasn’t leading, was running a strong second.

It was Burton in the lead when pit-stop time came up. He chose to go in first, for gas and tires, on Lap 128. After an efficient stop, he was back on the track, strong as ever.

Gordon chose to stay out a little longer and it turned out to be his best decision of the day, thanks to racing luck. For as he was taking on fuel and tires, the engine in Ricky Rudd’s Ford was blowing apart, throwing him into the wall and bringing out the caution flag.

Burton, out on the course, had to slow down and fall in behind the pace car. Gordon, snug in his pit, finished the refueling, got out ahead of the pace car and went around to catch the field. When the green flag fell, Burton was a few car lengths ahead of Gordon on the track, but nearly a lap behind him in actuality.

Asked what he’d said to himself when he realized what had happened, Burton said, “This is a family-oriented business, so I can’t say that.”

If racing luck takes, though, it sometimes gives back too. In Burton’s case, it gave back the nearly-lost lap, for when things looked bleakest for him, Joe Nemechek hit the wall in his Chevy only a lap after racing had resumed, and Burton was able to duck in for a splash of fuel, then catch the field, unlapping himself in the process.

Still, he was far behind Gordon, and spent the rest of the race trying to catch him.

“[Nearly losing the lap] was disappointing but I didn’t think it was a devastating blow that we couldn’t overcome. Obviously, getting a lap down hurt us a great deal but what really hurt us the most was, on the next-to-last set of tires, I asked for [a chassis change] to make the car looser and I got it too loose.

“[Gordon] drove away from us and we never had a caution again to move us back up. Once he got a half a straightaway on us, we were pretty much done.”

Remarkably, however, Burton nearly made a race of it.

His crew tightened things up on his last stop and did make up time on Gordon, rolling into second place with 15 laps left. But there was no mad dash to the front, no last-lap duel, and he settled for a hard-earned second.

“We don’t know that he was running as hard as he could,” Burton said of leading Gordon. “I suspect he wasn’t. All day long we were pretty much equal to him and you don’t just, all of a sudden, start picking up three- or four-tenths [of a second] a lap. That tells me that he wasn’t running as hard as he could, to pick up half a second.

“Then I started doing the math in my head and said, ‘There’s not enough time.’ So I backed off and, sure enough, the lap that I backed off he picked up four-tenths.”

Gordon said he was well aware of what was happening behind him and took appropriate measures.

“I had him in my mirrors,” he said. “I saw him. When he was starting to close in, I was definitely trying to make sure I hit all my marks just right and not make any mistakes.

“At the end, I was pushing pretty hard. He was coming strong and I felt like I used it up [the right-rear tire] a little bit. I might have been able to get a little more out of it if I had had to race him hard.”

But, of course, he didn’t. Racing luck had seen to that much earlier.