Burton grows with race team

Ward Burton will always cherish his win in the Daytona 500, the biggest victory of his career. But when everything that followed was a disaster, it's easy to forget that moment.\nWeek after week after his season-opening victory, Burton fell deeper and deeper into a miserable slump.\nHe had finishes of 21st or worse 11 times, scored just two top-10 finishes and went to New Hampshire International Speedway last weekend stuck in a rut of finishing 33rd of worse in six of the last seven races.\nCritics just rolled their eyes at his Daytona win and blasted Burton and his Bill Davis Racing team.\nWhen he won last weekend at New Hampshire, it shut everyone up.\n"Right now, this is just what the doctor ordered. We needed it," Burton said. "We came out of the box and won the biggest race of the year. Since then, we've had some struggling times. So to win again, giving us two in one season, what more could you ask for?"\nBefore breaking out of his slump in New Hampshire, Burton's team was overlooked in the Winston Cup garage area.\nWhen he signed a contract extension with Davis earlier this month, some wondered why he wanted to stay on a losing team. Parts always broke, his No. 22 Dodge wasn't good enough to run up front on a consistent basis and Burton could never shake his bad luck.\nBut Burton wouldn't turn his back on Davis, and his team just kept plugging away. The effort finally showed at New Hampshire and led the car owner to defend their efforts.\n"We deserve more respect than we've gotten," Davis said. "Stuff hasn't fallen off our cars. We've had some unusual failures, drive shaft and transmission-wise. We've had some real good race cars. We've had some races we should have won.\n"We've got a real good race team that's had a really bad year."\nStill, it's hard to argue that luck hasn't played a part of Burton's two wins.\nNo one forgets how he won the Daytona 500, inheriting the lead when Sterling Marlin got out of his car to try to pull his crumpled fender away from his tire during a red-flag. Prohibited from working on his car during a stoppage, Marlin was forced to the back of the pack on the restart. Burton took over the lead and held on in the final few laps for the victory.\nAt New Hampshire, Matt Kenseth dominated the race and was running away from the field when he blew a tire and Burton coasted by him for the win.\nBut Burton won't remember the circumstances when he looks back on his two wins of the season.\n"Sometimes winning is just a matter of being in the right place at the right time," he said. "It's not always about the best car, it's about having a good car that can be up front and capitalize when the big breaks come."\nNow that the black cloud has lifted, Burton is looking to the future.\nHe's with Davis through 2004, extending a partnership that began in 1995 with aspirations for a Winston Cup title.\nHe's not close now, but from where he and Davis have come, they don't really think they're that far off.\n"Ward's managed to grow the same as the program has; we've grown together," Davis said. "He came to our place when we had probably 10,000 square feet and 14 or 16 employees. Now it's 60,000 square feet and 125 employees. We've grown together.\n"It's been a great fit for both of us."\nSo Burton wouldn't think of driving for anyone else despite the ups and downs of his tenure with Davis. After all, when he looks back at the end of the season, he'll still have at least two wins to overshadow everything else.\n"I'm not a quitter," he said. "It just seems like in some areas in my life, this being one of them, that I have to fight for every little piece of real estate or everything good that happens to us. At the same time, I know that we can get this thing turned around"