Home seems like no help to Burton

If any headway is to be made against Chase for the Nextel Cup leader Jeff Burton, the other NASCAR contenders need to do it here, on his home ground -- where he may be shaky.

“I definitely think he can be caught,” said Kasey Kahne, who goes into today’s Subway 500 off a win last week at Charlotte, N.C., and a second-place finish the week before at Talladega, Ala.

“The way this season has gone, he can be caught this weekend,” Kahne continued about everyone’s bad luck. “It can turn around that quick.”

“I think he’s exactly right,” acknowledged Burton, who isn’t particularly comfortable on little .526-mile Martinsville Speedway, even though he grew up less than 60 miles away in South Boston, Va. “This track has potential to affect a lot of people in the Chase.”

Burton has only one top-10 finish in his last five races here. He finished 33rd here in April. He hasn’t won here since 1997. And he qualified a lackluster 28th for this race.

Plus, Jeff Gordon, who’ll start second today, with non-Chase driver Kurt Busch on the pole, figures Burton will be playing largely not to lose too much ground in the standings.

“All eyes are on him, and it’s about not making mistakes now, instead of going out and attacking,” said Gordon, who knows a thing or two about leading the championship standings late in a season, having won four Cup titles.

Gordon is last in the Chase standings, 216 points behind Burton, because Gordon has had foul luck and fallen out of the last three races -- with a broken fuel pump at Kansas City, caught up in a multi-car wreck at Talladega, and out with a blown engine at Charlotte.

Kahne wrecked in the Chase-opening race at Loudon, N.H., and has been hot the last two weeks, cutting his deficit to 160 points behind Burton.

Burton knows his turn at lousy luck could start any time, including here, in the sixth of the 10 Chase races.

“Jeff Gordon the last three weeks has had things not go his way; Kasey Kahne got off to a slow start,” Burton said. “Those races happen, and the same things can happen to us.”

Denny Hamlin, who has a chance to become the first rookie ever to win NASCAR’s top series championship, fell to sixth in the standings, 137 behind Burton, after being caught up in a wreck on the first lap at Charlotte last week.

Second-place Matt Kenseth, 45 points back, might be as vulnerable as Burton. Kenseth has one top-10 finish in his last eight races here and wound up 24th in April. Kenseth also will have to start in the middle of the pack, 20th in the 43-car field on the paper-clip-shaped track that makes racing more akin to bumper cars at an amusement park.

An even more important reward for qualifying well is pick of the best pit stall, vital in that the pit road here is even more cramped than the track.

“Pit road is so important here,” Gordon said. “It’s so tight that I think a good pit stall can really play in your favor. Track position is tough to get here, so if you have a good car and can put four tires on all day [in a comfortable pit stall] and maintain your track position, it’s hard to beat that.”

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Ed Hinton covers auto racing for Tribune newspapers.