Dover 400 race winner Jeff Burton insists that claiming the Nextel Cup is not at the forefront of his mind right now, despite his winless streak-snapping victory taking him to the head of the Chase for the Championship.

Burton's #31 Cingular Wireless Chevrolet made the winning pass with just six laps remaining to capture his 18th Cup Series victory after 175 races without a win. The long-awaited return to Victory Lane was Burton's first since joining Richard Childress Racing in late 2004, but continued RCR's recent run of success, after two successive wins for erstwhile points leader Kevin Harvick.

The win puts Burton on top of the point standings after two of the ten rounds that make up the Chase, but he lies just six points ahead of four-time Cup champion Jeff Gordon, who claimed third place in the #24 Chevy, and refuses to consider his title chances until later in the season.

"I think that, if we get down to three to go and we're still in a position, then we can talk about it, but I think that ten races is an eternity in our sport," he explained, "Break it down into four ten-race segments and, at one point in the year; everyone was convinced that Jimmie Johnson was going to win the championship. Then it was Matt Kenseth, Kyle Busch, and Kevin Harvick. Things happen fast in this sport - you can go to Dover and win the race and go to Kansas and run 43rd. I don't think that we can even worry about it right now. Eight races is an eternity and we're not thinking about it."

The Dover race was highlighted by a wheel-to-wheel battle between Burton and Kenseth that only ended when the Ford man ran out of fuel in the closing stages, denting his own Chase hopes.

"We led six laps, but it was the right six laps," the winner admitted, "Obviously, Matt and I had a great battle. That was a lot of fun, but I didn't know if I was going to get by him or not. I'm glad he didn't run of gas in front of me because I would have knocked the hell out of him. We were running so close, I wouldn't have been able to do anything.

"I knew that the sooner we could get by Matt, the better chance we had of winning. Every lap that went by was another lap I had to pass a great race car driver. When the laps start dwindling down, there are less opportunities, but I wasn't exercising patience. I was exercising the way I drive. I drive the way I drive and I'm not going to change because of the
situation I'm in, or the people I'm racing with. I am who I am.

"I just drive as hard as I can every lap. That's frustrating for those guys sometimes because I'm not good at taking it easy - I'm hard on brakes; I'm hard on equipment. I drive in deep, but that's who I am. Where we made up time really wasn't getting in the corner, it was as soon as I'd get to the corner. Matt would drive in a little deeper than me, but I would carry a lot of speed through the centre of the corner - that's my driving style here and at Bristol. It was two different styles competing against each other today.

"I know I'll get a phone call from Matt tonight. He was giving all he had, I was giving all I had and that's all really I can say. We had a little but fresher tyres, obviously, and that was a help to us, but all I can say is there was nothing left from me and that was it."

Despite going 175 races without tasting victory, Burton insists that he never worried about where the next one was coming from.

"I never woke up in the morning wondering if I'd ever win another race, and I never didn't sleep at night wondering about that," he claimed, "I've lost sleep wondering how we're going to make the car handle on the weekend that we were at that race track; or how we were going to get our company to be able to provide us with the right aero programme and engines and those types of things. But I haven't lost sleep because I haven't won. I know that's difficult to understand. As miserable as I am sometimes, I'm not good at enjoying the moment. But the positive to that is, I don't relish on the bad either. I'm on to the next thing pretty quick. I think that's helped me through a time when we haven't won."