NASCAR: Harrison Burton looking to break a Carl Edwards record

By Asher Fair | Jun 13, 2020

Harrison Burton, Joe Gibbs Racing, NASCAR (Photo by Chris Graythen/Getty Images) /

This weekend at Homestead-Miami Speedway, Harrison Burton has a chance to tie and break a record set by Carl Edwards back in the 2005 NASCAR Xfinity Series season.

Given how his rookie NASCAR Truck Series season went last year driving for Kyle Busch Motorsports, arguably the top team at NASCAR’s third highest level, Harrison Burton had a lot to prove entering his rookie Xfinity Series season driving for Joe Gibbs Racing, arguably the top team at the sport’s second highest level.

Burton failed to win a race last season and finished in 12th place in the championship standings, despite the fact that only 10 other drivers competed in all 23 races. Early on in the season, he drew criticism from team owner Kyle Busch, who stated that his drivers, Burton and Todd Gilliland, “ain’t doing shit” in top-tier equipment.

Yet through the first eight races of the 2020 Xfinity Series season, the 19-year-old Huntersville, North Carolina native has proven to be a great hire for Joe Gibbs’s team as the replacement for Christopher Bell, who won a series-high 15 races over the last two seasons before he was promoted to the Cup Series, behind the wheel of the #20 Toyota.

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Now he has a chance to make his start to the season a truly historic one, and he has a chance to do it this weekend with the Xfinity Series set to race twice at Homestead-Miami Speedway, once today and once tomorrow.

Burton, who continued a weird family trend by securing his first career victory on Leap Day at Auto Club Speedway, has yet to finish lower than ninth place this season. Never before in series history has a rookie recorded more than nine consecutive top 10 finishes to start a season.

The lone driver who pulled off that feat? NASCAR Hall of Fame Class of 2021 nominee Carl Edwards.

Edwards reeled off nine consecutive top 10 finishes to start the 2005 season driving for Roush Racing before finishing in 33rd place at Talladega Superspeedway. His impressive nine-race stint included a victory at Atlanta Motor Speedway and an average finish of 5.56. He led the championship standings through nine races.

So far this season, Burton’s average finish is a series-best 4.63, and he sits in third place in the championship standings behind Stewart-Haas Racing’s Chase Briscoe and JR Motorsports’ Noah Gragson, two drivers who have won twice so far this year. Burton’s worst finishes of the season are his ninth place finishes at Darlington Raceway and Charlotte Motor Speedway.

Burton must finish in the top 10 in Saturday’s race at the four-turn, 1.5-mile (2.414-kilometer) oval in Homestead, Florida to tie Edwards’s record and then again in Sunday’s race to break it. He has one career start at the track in his Xfinity Series career, with that coming last year when he finished in 10th place. In two career Truck Series starts at the track, he finished in 11th and 13th.

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Burton has recorded 10 consecutive top 10 finishes going back to last season, as he competed in several races for Joe Gibbs Racing late in the year. Saturday’s race, the Hooters 250, is set to be broadcast live on Fox beginning at 3:30 p.m. ET. Sunday’s race, the Contender Boats 250, is set to be broadcast live on Fox Sports 1 beginning at 12:00 p.m. ET.