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Jeff Burton might be the only person for whom what happened in Sunday's Food City 500 at Bristol Motor Speedway was more significant than how it went down.

"All I know is we have the trophy," Burton said after winning for the first time in 29 Cup starts at the .533-mile track. "That's what I came here to do, win."

Win he did, but not until plots twisted and entwined deliciously for the more than 150,000 on hand.

Since Burton won for the 20th time during his 16-year Cup career and at a track he called a "special facility," let's allow the native of South Boston, Va., to speak on what that means to him.

"This is a track where you have to be smart, you have to be aggressive," he said. "You have to do everything well here. You don't have any fluke winners at Bristol. It's one of those tracks that just requires so much from the equipment, requires a lot from the team, the driver, everybody. You can't have a real weak area and be successful here."

That's true, and Burton did hang around in or near the top five for most of the afternoon until his No.31 Chevrolet got a little tight near the finish.

Burton had dropped to sixth before Brian Vickers cut a tire and went into the wall to bring out a caution as the leaders completed Lap486 of 500.

At that point Tony Stewart, who led 267 laps in his Toyota, was out front and trying to hold off Kevin Harvick and Denny Hamlin. Both were coming fast before Vickers' incident.

Harvick gave up second place to come to pit road for tires, hoping enough people behind him would do the same to help make that the right move.

Burton's crew chief, Scott Miller, never debated not coming in since his car had been faltering. "The opportunity presented itself for us to make something happen, and our best chance to make something happen was to do what we did," Miller said.

Stewart, Hamlin and Dale Earnhardt Jr. stayed out and lined up at the front of the field for a restart with five laps left. Harvick was fourth with four new tyres, Greg Biffle was fifth with two new tires and Burton sixth with four new tires.

Hamlin jumped around Stewart, his Joe Gibbs Racing teammate, on Lap497 and grabbed the lead. Two laps later, Harvick cut to Stewart's low side through Turns1 and 2 but pushed up the track and rapped Stewart's car, sending Stewart into the wall.

"I thought I left him plenty of room, I don't know," Stewart said. "I am sure it's somehow my fault."

Harvick said that wasn't the case. "I just lost it underneath of Tony," he said. "I made a mistake. It was mine to lose at that point, and I lost it."

Burton was there to capitalize. "That was the door that opened," he said. "If we had any shot at all to win, we had to jump through it."

Burton bumped past Harvick for second as the yellow waved, then lined up behind Hamlin for the green-white-checkered restart.

When it came time to go, Hamlin didn't.

"We were either out of fuel or it was a fuel pickup problem," Hamlin said. "By all calculations we were good on fuel to the end, including a green-white-checkered. It has been that kind of a season for us. We can't get a break. We just couldn't finish it off."

Burton jumped through that door, too, sweeping into the lead and holding off Harvick and Clint Bowyer for a 1-2-3 Richard Childress Racing finish. Hamlin wound up sixth and Stewart 14th.

"We put ourselves in position, and that's how you win these races," Burton said. "We're not going to stand in here today and say we had the fastest car all day. We had good pit stops. We had good strategy.

"We did all the little things well. When you do all the little things well, a lot of times the big things take care of themselves. We had some breaks, but we put ourselves in position to take advantage of the breaks."[[In-content Ad]]

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