The driver of the no. 31 Caterpillar car gave a short talk, answered questions and posed for photos with the 12 finalists and their wives Friday night in Las Vegas. Accompanying Burton was Mike “The Bagman” Bagley.
When asked what it was like to drive the new Gen-6 cars on on the relatively short Las Vegas Motor Speedway, Burton was enthusiastic.
“We’ve had a lot of 2013 test sessions at 1.5-mile tracks. There are going to be a lot of questions at Las Vegas (Motor Speedway) for every team,” he said. “The new Gen-6 cars are really fast with a lot of grip … Add all that up and it means we are going to go really fast.”
He bragged on the new Goodyear tires and the downforce and power of the new cars while cautioning that what happens in testing and what happens in the race are two different things—the race being full of unknowns.
“It’s a high-speed chess game,” Burton said. “One thing you have to have in this race is speed. If you’re off by just 2/10 of a second that can take you from first to fifteenth.”
Burton was also asked if there was anybody he steered clear of on the track, anybody who was too aggressive. He acknowledged that Tony Stewart had that reputation in the past but that “there isn’t a driver that I look at on race day and cringe. In the past that hasn’t always been the case.”
