Of all the drivers in the Chase, he should know.
Two years ago, Burton reached the midpoint with the lead, then came to the track about 60 miles from where he grew up and saw his luck run out. Engine trouble found him in the garage less than halfway through the race, and Jimmie Johnson assumed the points lead and won the title.
Burton, then, arrives this weekend wary of NASCAR's smallest, trickiest track, and he can reel off the litany of potential trouble spots as though he's lived them over and over again.
"It's so easy to drive into Turn One and two guys get together in front of you and then there's nowhere to go and the guys behind you have nowhere to go," Burton said Friday before qualifying was washed out for Sunday's Tums Quikpak 500, the sixth of 10 Chase races.
"It's easy to drive in the corner underneath a guy and get free and have to chase the car up and hit him. It's easy for you to be the guy on the outside getting run into," he said.
"So this is just really, really difficult racing."
Burton, a notoriously poor qualifier, got a break when rain washed out all on-track activities, giving him the second spot on the starting grid and, more importantly, the second selection of pit stalls. On the narrow pit road, only a few offer simple, clear departures.
"I'll be honest, I came here today not looking forward to the questions, "How are you going to run any good from qualifying back there?"' he said, laughing.
But the danger of Martinsville is hardly minimized by a good pit stall. The 0.526-mile oval is the diciest short track in the series, and one mistake can cost a team dearly.
"Just getting into a wreck or causing a wreck that you really didn't want to be involved in happens very easily here," Burton said. "More easily than at most tracks we go to.
"Honestly you can run well here and get on the wrong pit sequence and finish 18th. It's so hard to pass, but if you get in the back at the wrong time, you're done. Everything has got to work out," he continued. "You've got to have the cautions fall the right way, you've got to run well, you've got to stay out of trouble, you've got to keep from causing a wreck, you've got to not have mechanical problems. There's a lot of stuff going on."
It all adds up to make Johnson's record here all the more remarkable.
He's won four times at Martinsville, including three in a row before Denny Hamlin won in March of this year. And he's finished in the top 10 in 12 of his 13 starts at the track.
Because of his record, Johnson thinks it's critical to boost his 69-point lead over Burton before the series heads for Atlanta next weekend, and then Texas after that.
"I'm just hopeful to stretch it out. If it's 10 points, or 15 points, or whatever it may be, my goal leaving here is to try and get a few points on those guys," Johnson said.
"And this is a track where I feel we can do that."
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