Burton looking forward to high speeds on high banks

After two weeks of calamity on the flats, Ward Burton is glad to be back on the high-banked side of NASCAR.

"I can compromise and find more of a place that the car will run," Burton said as he prepared for Saturday night's Pepsi 400 at Daytona International Speedway. "We're looking for some good, exciting weekends coming up."

But he hopes what he finds at Daytona will help him forget what happened last Sunday at Sears Point Raceway in Sonoma, Calif., in the first of two Winston Cup outings on road courses.

Running with the leaders less than 10 miles from the end, Burton was victimized when Ricky Rudd tried to avoid a sliding Rusty Wallace, caromed off a tire barrier and reentered the track at the same spot Burton had reached.

"In about 300 feet, I went from a good run through the esses in eighth place to a black-and-yellow Caterpillar airplane," Burton said. "That's two straight weeks where we were going to finish in the top 10 and got caught up in somebody else's mess right at the end of the race."

A week earlier, Burton's Pontiac wound up as junk in the Pocono 500.

"... Everything happens real quick," he said of the road layouts, where one-groove racing leaves little room for escape.

Although the 31-degree banking in the turns on the 2 1/2 -mile Daytona tri-oval promotes speed far in excess of what's possible on the short and flat tracks, Burton likes the width that allows cars to race two or three abreast. There is more room to avoid problems.

But getting the car ready to race at night presents a new set of problems. Track temperatures vary from day to night, changing the amount of tire grip as the cars speed through the turns at close to 200 mph.

"If the track changes, it's not going to be because of sunshine or a cloud passing by or whatever," Burton said. "The track changing Friday night is going to be the way you figure it's going to be changing Saturday night, too.

"You have to be really aware of what the track is doing."

Burton likes what his team is doing, and credits crew chief Tom Baldwin with much of its improvement from a 16th-place finish last year in the series championship to a current standing of 10th. He won't forget the leadership Baldwin displayed at the Las Vegas 400, the third race of the season.

"We were terrible most of the day Saturday, and then at happy hour we ran one good lap, but he wasn't happy with it," Burton said of the final practice before the race that first Sunday in March. "Tommy changed everything but the letters on the car, and that's a flat track, and we beat everybody but one guy, so we know we can run good just about anywhere."

That "one guy" they couldn't beat was Burton's younger brother, Jeff.

Ward says Baldwin has taken the team to a new level.

"We're not satisfied. We want to go to the next. We've still got a large area to improve, which is good," he said. "It's not like we're at this level and this is the only level we're gonna be at."

Baldwin calls it team chemistry.

"We've got a really good bunch of guys that are working with me," he said. "Everything's just clicking right now."

One click Burton would like to see is a victory. The only one he's had came in the fall of 1995 at North Carolina Speedway - a high-banked oval.

Car owner Bill Davis shares Burton's optimism.

"We've got all it takes to be one of the top teams," he said.

Burton is hopeful that the experience of the first half of the season will pay off down the stretch.

"I think we're at the point where we've been consistent enough that it wouldn't surprise us or a lot of other people if we slipped up and won," he said.

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