Burton vows not to change approach

The Daytona 500 pole-sitter has been one of the surprises of the season, currently lying fourth in the points standings thanks to eleven top ten finishes this year.

He finished second at last weekend's race at Chicagoland, his best finish of the year.

However, Burton reckons that while the top two of Jimmie Johnson and Matt Kenseth seem assured of their spots in the year's ten-race, ten-driver playoff for the title, he believes that his 155-point advantage over 11th is not enough for him to relax yet.

"All of the next eight races are exceptionally important," Burton said. "If you look at the points from third to 12th, they are really tight.

"If you're the 17 or 48 [Kenseth or Johnson], you want to experiment just a little better and they are to be in a position to do that. The rest of us are fighting real hard to make sure we get into the Chase.

"We don't have a goal where we want to finish when we go into every race, with the exception of winning.  We go into every race trying get the best race we can.

"On some days, that might be 15th and on many days that might be 30th and on some days that might be a win.  We go to New Hampshire this weekend trying to get the very most out of the week with no regard to where we are in the points.

"The way we get to where we need to be in the points is by having great races.  We don't go into New Hampshire thinking, okay, we're fourth in points and we're 100 or whatever points.  We go into it thinking, how are we going to win this race.  The best way to getting points is to win a race.

"Now, my personality and the way I drive, if I was really an exceptionally aggressive driver, I might have to pull it back some.  But the way I drive, I don't have to change the way I drive and the way we approach things because of trying to protect this.  I'm not going to be overly aggressive, or I'm generally not overly aggressive.

"I'm going to drive the way I always drive because that's the way I've always done it and that's the way I've had success. I'm not going to change it."