Veteran Sprint Cup driver Jeff Burton, who ended his full-time career last season to race part-time and work as a commentator for NBC, will make his first start of 2014 this weekend in the Kobalt Tools 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
Burton will drive the No. 66 Toyota from Michael Waltrip Racing. Waltrip plans to drive the car in the restrictor-plate races, at Daytona International Speedway and Talladega Superspeedway. Burton will run a limited number of races, and Joe Nemechek will run the rest as part of an alliance between Michael Waltrip Racing and Jay Robinson Racing.
Burton said in a team release that he’s anxious to see the results of the test sessions that he’s done for Waltrip over the winter. And he said that while he would like to race more, he’s not going to do so unless it will be beneficial to his team.
“It’s got to be part of a plan, and if it’s not, we’re making a mistake,” he said.
Awaiting delivery: Paul Menard, driver of the No. 27 Chevrolet at Richard Childress Racing, will have his friend Matt Crafton, the reigning Camping World Truck Series champion, on standby to drive his car this weekend at Las Vegas Motor Speedway should the stork come calling.
Menard and his wife, Jennifer, are expecting their first child soon, and the veteran driver plans to be there for the birth.
“Paul and I have been good friends going back to 2001,” Crafton said in a team release. “We’ve raced together, and I actually spotted for him early in his career. For him to have the confidence in me to get the job done if he has to head back home — that’s awesome.”
Stewart-Haas drivers: While Kevin Harvick was dominating the Sprint Cup race at Phoenix International Raceway on Sunday en route to victory, his Stewart-Haas Racing teammates had disappointing days.
Kurt Busch blew an engine in his No. 41 Chevrolet and finished 39th, and Danica Patrick was involved in a wreck and finished 36th.
“That’s two weeks in a row we’ve had good cars and nothing to show for it,” Patrick told reporters at Phoenix. “I’m starting to think if we didn’t have bad luck, we’d have no luck at all.”
Patrick also crashed in the season opener at Daytona International Speedway, finishing 40th, and is 39th in the points standings. Busch is 30th.
Team co-owner Tony Stewart, still on the mend from a broken leg, finished 16th at Phoenix and is 20th in the standings heading into this weekend’s race at Las Vegas.
Milestone weekend: Two veteran Sprint Cup drivers will make milestone starts this weekend at Las Vegas. Martin Truex Jr. will make his 300th start, and Ryan Newman will make the 1,000th Cup start for a car numbered 31.
Newman will drive the No. 31 for Richard Childress Racing, which he joined in the offseason. That number has been around the series since its first race, at Charlotte in 1949, where Sterling Long drove his No. 31 Hudson to a seventh-place finish.
Although some of the sport’s all-time greats, including champions Joe Weatherly and Cale Yarborough, were among the 98 drivers that used the No. 31, it didn’t make it to Victory Lane until 2001 when Robby Gordon drove it to victory at New Hampshire Motor Speedway. Since then it has won six more times, two with Gordon and four with Jeff Burton.
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