alt_driver
Photo credit: Nigel Kinrade Photography
Racing

Harrison Burton puts bitterness behind to lead AM Racing

By |

It was not easy for Harrison Burton to lose his ride at Wood Brothers Racing and move back to the Xfinity Series, but now, he's embracing the opportunity to show that AM Racing can be a contender.

Not to say that this has been an easy journey for Burton, the son of 21-time Cup winner Jeff Burton. He first had to deal with some strong emotions.

"I was upbeat, happy, but, I think the first time I was kind of bitter or mad was the Daytona 500," Burton told AltDriver during a sitddown in the AM Racing hauler. "Watching that on TV was really, really hard.

"Having been there and then losing it, it makes you more hungry, right? Especially just all the mixed emotions of having won there and then not racing there the next year. So that was really hard."

It would have been easy for Burton to let this bitterness linger. He chose to go a different route. He embraced his role as a leader on the team and began looking for ways to help AM Racing grow.

Interestingly enough, this is something that two members of the Ford Performance camp predicted would happen. Cole Custer and Joey Logano both told AltDriver last season that Burton would bring significant value to a young team with his experience and personality. Logano, in particular, called this partnership a "great win."

"It's good for Harrison. It's good for AM to have each other," Logano said in response to a question from AltDriver. "There's so much potential in that race team and they really just need consistency."

Originally a member of the Toyota pipeline, Burton quickly rose through the racing ranks. He won the ARCA Menards Series East championship in 2017, competed full-time in the Truck Series in 2019, and then joined Joe Gibbs Racing in 2020. Despite having essentially no practice sessions as a rookie Xfinity driver, he won four races.

Burton spent one more season in the Xfinity Series, and then he switched to Ford Performance for a move up to the Cup Series. He replaced Matt DiBenedetto at the historic Wood Brothers Racing as NASCAR moved into the Gen 7 era.

Yet, these three seasons were a struggle for the North Carolina native. He posted six top-10 finishes and two top-fives in the famed No. 21, but he also scored a dramatic first win at Daytona International Speedway after a late battle with future Hall of Famer Kyle Busch.

Photo credit: Nigel Kinrade Photography

This win occurred after Wood Brothers Racing announced that the team would replace Burton with Josh Berry in 2025 and beyond. The win did not secure his future in the Cup Series, but it taught him valuable lessons as he moved back to the Xfinity Series to help AM Racing with its rebuild after a tumultuous season.

"Racing against those guys every weekend, even when you have a bad day in Cup, you're still racing, like, the top percent of the world of stock car racers," Burton said. "I remember racing, like, Joey Logano and Denny Hamlin for 22nd one week, and I'm like, 'What is this, right? Like, this is ridiculous.'

"And that level of competition elevates you, makes you better. And so taking the lessons I learned from doing that, I think it's just kind of flowed into the race craft of this car, even though it's very different. The driving style is different. How you make lap time is different.

"The race craft is still pretty similar in how you're aggressive on restarts and things like that and when not to be aggressive. And so I think I learned a lot just taking my lumps the last couple of years or the good moments I had the last couple of years."

Burton brought improved race craft back to the Xfinity Series, but he still had a tall task ahead of him. He needed to partner with AM Racing to help the team grow into a consistent threat for top-10 finishes and top-fives.

This was a completely new experience considering that his previous stops -- Joe Gibbs Racing and Wood Brothers Racing -- were established companies with dozens and dozens of wins. AM Racing, for comparison, moved from the Truck Series to Xfinity in 2023 before experiencing turnover with its drivers and shop employees.

"I was the first hire," Burton said. "Like it was me and the management, and we were all just trying to figure out who to put around the car, right? We kind of reset from the year before, both of us, whether me as a driver or AM as an organization."

Burton was hands-on in the early days as AM Racing built up its list of employees. He brought in Kevin Hamlin, Alex Bowman's spotter in Cup, to guide him during Xfinity races. He heavily recommended to AM Racing VP of Competition Matt Lucas that the team hire former Legacy Motor Club engineer Danny Efland as the crew chief.

As Burton explained, he and Lucas almost had to explain to some candidates what they sought in a crew chief. Efland was different during the interview process. He was actively engaged and asking numerous questions about all aspects of the team.

"I'm not sitting here telling you that I'm the manager of the race team," Burton said with a smile. "We've got some really smart people that are helping do that. And so they ask for my input, which is really awesome.

"I was really hands-on in the beginning as far as who I wanted to be my crew chief, who I wanted to be my spotter, or who I wanted the main group of people that are my day-to-day contacts. And then I let them kind of delegate and let them do their deal because we've got the right people in place."

Bringing in Efland and many other key pieces has helped AM Racing achieve some consistency. Burton has seven top-10 finishes and one top-five in the first 17 races of the season. He only needs two more top-10s to match the team's single-season mark.

His average finish is 14.1 and his only finish worse than 26th this season was an axle failure at Circuit of the Americas. He even finished 14th at Pocono after a frantic engine change before the race, which the team completed as Burton headed to driver intros, and damage from an incident started by another driver.

What's staggering about these statistics is that AM Racing has experienced a significant amount of turnover this season. The only members of the team who are on the roster going back to Daytona are Burton, Hamlin, Efland, and PR man Matt Hendricks.

AM Racing has seen some members of the team depart for bigger opportunities while others just didn't fit. Some just left the sport entirely.

"It's the separator, right? And so everyone's going to have stuff like that (engine failure)," Burton said with a hint of pride in his voice. "Everyone's going to have a moment where they look back and say, 'Wow, that was a really hard thing that we had to do.'

"It's just kind of how you respond to it that either kills you or builds confidence, right? And I think our group, especially on the road crew side of things, is more confident than they were last weekend because of that. And that kind of goes into every little piece of the race car."

There is no denying that AM Racing has made significant progress in its first season with Burton in the No. 25 Ford Mustang. Yet, the team has more work to do.

Consistently contending for top-fives and the occasional win is a point of emphasis for AM Racing. It is something that the team inches closer to with every passing week. But there is another major item on the checklist that the team must address as it tries to jump from 13th in points to above the playoff cutline.

"You look at our stage points (33), and we're not scoring the stage points that a lot of the JRM, JGR guys are," Burton said. "Yeah, it's not enough, right? So for us, that's the next step is go get more stage points, run better sooner. We have the capability.

"Like, there's runs throughout the year where we'll be top five on lap times, but you start 16th when you start that run and finish eighth. It's really not that great of points, so we have to unload better, and I think we did a good job of that (at Pocono)."