Burton reveals secret of his success

Dodge ace Burton admits it would have been easy to use 190mph blocking tactics, which triggered most of the accidents in Sunday's big race.

"In a couple instances out there that I could have hit somebody and wrecked them," he said. "I'm sure there was more than one instance they could have done the same to me. But I tried to drive the way you want to be driven. Last year it felt like we had more knocks than we should have because we try to drive clean."

Kevin Harvick was blamed for causing the biggest of the crashes, when he blocked Jeff Gordon at Turn 1, causing a huge accident that Burton narrowly avoided.

"I guess I don't really know exactly what happened with 29 [Harvick] and 24 [Gordon], but I know there was some blocking going on. Obviously, I knew that 29 was going up the track. I had just a moment to decide what to do. Either way, it was going to be awful close. I tried to stay low and cut the wheel hard to the left.

"Actually, I got sideways and there couldn't have been more than a foot or two in front of my nose when I went by him. That was pretty much the pivotal point of us being here today, missing that wreck," he added.