Growing up just down the road in South Boston, Richard Childress Racing's Jeff Burton feels down home at the half-mile short track in Martinsville, Virginia. Burton comes into this weekend off a win at Lowe's Motor Speedway, he is second in the series standings and carries a great deal of momentum at his back.

"This is a place I grew up," Burton explained. "I remember the day they announced they were going to have a late model stock car race here, I was getting ready to race late models and I thought, 'Wow, I get to race at Martinsville,' that was really cool. This is a special place."

The driver of the No. 31 AT&T Chevrolet admits the .526-mile track has been both good and bad to the native Virginian. In twenty-eight races at Martinsville, Burton has one victory, ten top-5s, and fourteen top-10s.

"To me, this is a really fun race track," Burton said on Friday. "It's one of the hardest tracks we go to. It requires a great deal of aggressiveness, but also at the same time a great deal of patience - it's hard to do both."

Perhaps no run has stuck in Burton's crawl more than the 2006 Subway 500. Burton entered the event with the points lead, but quickly ran into trouble. An incident in the early laps of the race stuck Burton back in the pack with a lot of laps remaining. Later that same race, engine issues ended the No. 31's day and dropped them from first to fifth in the series standings - essentially ruining their championship hopes.

"As far as 2006, we did that, not the race track," Burton went on to say. "We made a mistake, the race track did not cause us to make that mistake. I don't look at this racetrack in the sense that, 'well, you owe me one.' I look at it, to me as a special place. We've had a lot of success here and we've had a lot of bad runs here too. I don't come here with preconceved notions that we're going to run well, I don't come here with preconceved notions we're going to run poorly."

Entering the weekend second in points and poised to make a move on leader Jimmie Johnson, Burton knows anything is bound to happen at Martinsville, but in no way blames the track itself.

"This race track didn't cause us to lose a championship. We broke a part and ultimately we're responsible for that."

While most Chase drivers view Talladega as the one 'wild card' race in the Chase, each of them understand that Martinsville is the next true test. Tight, flat corners create intense racing throughout the field and traffic is always one of the biggest concerns.

"There's a lot of mechanical problems here," Burton pointed out as one of the concerns for Sunday's race. The biggest concern, however, is simply the race. "It's so easy to drive into Turn one and two guys get together in front of you and there's nowhere to go and the guys behind you have nowhere to go. It's real easy to drive into the corner underneath a guy, get free and have to chase the car up and hit them. It's easy to be the guy on the outside that's getting run into. It's just really, really difficult racing. The shorter the track, the more and more hostile it becomes, because it has to."

Winning at any track is no easy task, but in order to take a win at Martinsville, Burton points out, everything has to go your way.

"Everything's got to work out," Burton went on to explain. "You have to have the cautions fall the right way, you got to run well, you got to stay out of trouble, you got to keep from causing a wreck, you got to not have a mechanical problem - there's a lot of stuff involved."

Age and experience has put Burton in a better position to win a championship than ever before. His calm, cool and collected attitude is respected throughout the garage and has a lot to do with his on-track results. With just a bit of luck and if he and his RCR team can maintain the consistent runs they have been enjoying, perhaps this will be the year Burton collects that first Cup Series championship - something long overdue.