No Star Talk for Jeff Burton

Jeff Burton, who’s won three of the 12 races this season, is being talked about as the next Winston Cup superstar. Burton doesn’t want to hear it.

“We’re a long way from what Dale Earnhardt and Jeff Gordon and Mark Martin and Dale Jarrett and Terry Labonte, we’re a long way from what those guys have done,” Burton said. “I have a real clear understanding of that.”

Burton’s victory in the Coca-Cola 600 last Sunday in Concord, N.C., left him 33 points behind series leader Jarrett. But as Burton pointed out, the season is barely one-third complete.

“We could end up this year winning three races and 15th in points, and we wouldn’t feel too good about ourselves,” he said. “We feel pretty good about ourselves right now, but we have an awful lot of respect and reverence for the fact that this is hard.

“We’re not going to get too excited about how well we do on a given night, because I promise you when you start thinking that you’ve got it all figured out, you’ll realize that you’re dumb as dirt.”

Burton needs to look no further than his own Winston Cup record to support his point. While he is off to an impressive start this season, his three victories push his total to eight in a 167-race career that began in 1993.

With those numbers in mind, Burton didn’t hesitate when asked what it would take to be considered a great driver.

“Win about five championships and 100 races,” he said. “That’s about what it would take. That’s just the truth. The Bulls were a great basketball team. The 49ers were a great football team. That’s what great is. You can be really good for a short period of time. That’s not greatness. That’s being good.”

No matter whether Burton’s career ends up being categorized as great or merely good, he knows he’ll always have at least one faithful fan: Wade Smith.

Burton’s victory last Sunday gave him a $1 million sponsor bonus, and also earned $1 million for Smith, a 41-year-old fan and remodeling contractor from Metropolis, Ill., who was chosen randomly for the promotion.

Not surprisingly, Smith was quite excited as he celebrated in Victory Lane with Burton, who seemed just as excited for him.

Burton smiled and laughed when asked later about Smith.

“Wade’s my pal,” he said. “When everybody else dislikes me and I’m old and crotchety and grumpy, he’s going to still like me.”

MELLING REMEMBERED: Bill Elliott has fond memories of Winston Cup car owner Harry Melling, who was 54 when he died May 29 of a heart attack at his family’s ski and golf resort in Michigan.

Elliott had the best years of his career while driving for Melling, winning 34 races in Ford Thunderbirds from 1982-91, including a career-high 11 in 1985 and the 1988 driving title. It was the first championship for Ford in NASCAR’s modern era, which began in 1972.

“Harry did a lot for me, not just a little,” Elliott said. “We started out where we just wanted to run better and then run good, and then the goal became to win races. He always kept believing through that entire process.”

TOUGH AND CONSISTENT: Bobby Labonte is the only driver in the top four in the 1999 points standings who has yet to win this year. It’s about the only thing he hasn’t done.

Labonte has three poles and a pair of second-place finishes, including one in the Coca-Cola 600. He has six other top-fives, including three thirds, as well as nine top-10s.

Labonte, third in the standings, 89 points behind Jarrett, is the only driver on the circuit to lead at least one lap in 11 of this year’s 12 races.

But probably his most noteworthy achievement is that he has completed every race so far in 1999, a feat made all the more impressive when you consider that a crash during a practice run in March--eight races ago--left him with a broken shoulder.

JUNIOR’S CONCENTRATION: Dale Earnhardt Jr. said he wasn’t surprised to feel physically drained after his first Winston Cup race. After all, the 400-lap, 600-mile Coca-Cola 600 is the longest event on the schedule.

What left the 24-year-old Earnhardt feeling somewhat bewildered was that he also found himself struggling to stay mentally sharp as the race progressed.

“It happened a couple of times,” he said. “You get to doing the same thing lap after lap. You kind of forget what you’re trying to accomplish and start laying on the headrest and running around the track, around the track.”

Earnhardt said he expects he’ll gradually adjust to the physical and mental demands of the Winston Cup circuit just as he did in the Busch Grand National series, where he is the defending champion.

“I got so comfortable running those 300-mile Busch races,” he said. “When I first started running them, they were difficult and I’d get tired and get hot. I’d just barely make it to the trailer after a race. Now it’s just a kick in the bucket. I’m thinking maybe the Winston Cup races will get like that.”