Burton: Playoffs Are ‘A Whole New Season’ For No. 21 Team

Harrison Burton and the Wood Brothers have a chance to be surprise contenders in the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs. (HHP/Jacy Norgaard photo)

CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Over the past two weeks, Harrison Burton has seen his NASCAR Cup Series season completely reset in the wake of his breakthrough win at Daytona (Fla.) Int’l Speedway.

Burton has gone from last – 34th – among the full-time Cup Series drivers in the point standings to being a part of the postseason with a chance to chase his first championship in his third year at the sport’s premier level.

It’s a leap he both appreciates and relishes, knowing that the 10-race playoff stretch basically constitutes a completely fresh start for the whole No. 21 Wood Brothers Racing team.

“You look at the points, [and] we’re right on the cut line [now]. It’s a whole new season for us,” Burton noted during NASCAR Playoff Media Day earlier this week. “Everything that happened beforehand doesn’t matter and we’re just going forward from here.

“Hopefully [everyone will see] a new-look 21 car for these next 10 weeks, so we’re excited for that.”

Burton’s breakthrough victory in the Coke Zero Sugar 400 at the World Center of Racing was just the latest example of a surprise winner finding their way into the postseason field.

In the past, similar stories like Austin Dillon (2022) and Michael McDowell (2021 & 2023) made waves by breaking into the playoffs with non-powerhouse organizations at the time.

Burton said that, on the outside looking in, he understands why he and the Wood Brothers are viewed in a parallel light going into this year’s title hunt.

“If I was not a part of this team, I would say the same thing,” he agreed when asked if he’d categorize himself as a playoff underdog. “You can’t help but look at where we were in points, look at how our season had gone, [and] look at the fact that I was on my way out of my job, and think that. They were making changes because the performance wasn’t there.

“I love them, and they love me as a person, but we didn’t perform the way we needed to. Now, though, we have this great opportunity to reset all of that. We have a great opportunity to kind of be born again,” Burton continued. “It’s like, ‘OK, a whole new season right here. Let’s go.’ That is a rare opportunity in sports and a rare opportunity in life to get to do that, so I’m going to make the most of that and I know my race team is making the most of it as well.

“It’s so fun to be a part of a team that’s fighting for something like we are, and we’re going to do our best to use that energy in a positive way.”

Perhaps the best news for Burton is that the playoffs begin at a track – Atlanta (Ga.) Motor Speedway – where he ran solidly in February.

The 23-year-old, second-generation driver qualified 16th and finished 11th at the 1.54-mile, quad-oval superspeedway in one of his best runs of the season, outside of his win at Daytona and a 10th-place finish at Talladega (Ala.) Superspeedway in April.

If he can keep his No. 21 Motorcraft/DEX Imaging Ford Mustang Dark Horse out of trouble and start strong, Burton tipped that he sees a way to be able to “surprise some people” and advance out of the Round of 16.

“I see the first round [strategy] as just taking it one round at a time,” he explained. “You look at the first round, Atlanta is a place we’ve run well in the past. Just coming off the Daytona win, [Atlanta] is a place I feel like everyone that’s in the playoff field could win or everyone could wreck in the first five laps. That’s a big roll of the dice, but there’s a huge part the driver plays in decision-making and execution to where I can try and study the best I can for that one. I think Atlanta is a really big thinking type of racetrack.

Harrison Burton (HHP/Jacy Norgaard photo)

“Then we go to Watkins Glen and there are a lot of new [tire compound] changes that are coming, so whoever embraces those changes the best is going to have a good day … so we’re really going to have to focus on that. And then I see Bristol as a really good racetrack for me, a really good racetrack for us, where earlier this year we qualified well and I felt really confident going in. Unfortunately, I was the first one to find out we were cording tires that day, so we dropped to the back and got stuck in that whole mess as just one of the casualties of not knowing. But the good news there is, we know how to build a fast race car for that racetrack and I know how to drive it well.

“I think Atlanta and Bristol are really big opportunities for us. I think my road course racing has been getting better, but I think it’s something I need to continue to work on and Watkins Glen is going to be a really big test for that with the pressure on. I’m excited for that challenge as well, but I see the bookends of the round being huge opportunities for us that we have to take advantage of.”

Another plus for Burton is that he made the NASCAR Xfinity Series playoffs during both of his full-time seasons at that level in 2020 and 2021, experience that he plans to rely on as he attempts to make a similar run at the Cup Series level.

“I think it’s huge,” said Burton, who finished eighth in points both years in the Xfinity Series. “I learned a lot of lessons in those of making it a really big deal. I remember my first year. We got in the playoffs, and we struggled and didn’t do very well, so I got knocked out of the playoffs and then won two races in a row right after we got knocked out that would have gotten us to [the championship race in Phoenix. It’s like, ‘Oh my gosh.’ It’s just crazy how that all worked out and what could have happened.

“I thought in those years in Xfinity I had real chances to win championships. You don’t get those very often, so I learned a lot from that, and I think I can take that into this year in Cup.”

Though the Cup Series playoffs are as big a stage as he’s ever been on in NASCAR, Burton said he’s trying not to let the emotion of the moment get to him, and just enjoying the ride as it comes.

“For me, the more you build it up in your head, I think the worse you’re going to perform. I think you just need to understand that it’s the same race I ran last year. I was a part of all the same races, and now it just means more,” he explained. “For us, I think using that in a positive way, using that heightened intensity as a positive kind of thing for our team is going to be really, really good. I think our group is built for that.

“I think we’ve all been through different scenarios in our different careers, where we’ve had to kind of pull through and come through in big moments, and we showed we could do that in Daytona with everything on the line.

“Now we just have to continue that momentum and continue that confidence, and we’ll see what happens.”

Burton will begin his quest for a Cup Series championship during the playoff-opening Quaker State 400 available at Walmart at Atlanta on Sunday, Sept. 8. Broadcast coverage is slated for 3 p.m. ET, live on USA, the Performance Racing Network, and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, channel 90.