Driver Spotlight: Jeb Burton

BY JARED TURNER

On the heels of his best and first full-time season as a NASCAR Xfinity Series driver, Jeb Burton harbors high hopes for 2022 in NASCAR’s No. 2 division.

Burton has tempered his expectations just a bit, however, for the simple fact that he’s with a relatively new team – Our Motorsports – in only its third year of Xfinity Series competition. Nevertheless, the son of 2002 Daytona 500 winner and former NASCAR Cup Series veteran Ward Burton is optimistic about what he can accomplish in Year One with team owner Chris Our’s organization.

“We’re building something,” said Burton, who will campaign the No. 27 Chevrolet for the three-car organization alongside teammates Brett Moffitt and Anthony Alfredo. “We’re going to have our ups and downs, for sure, but Mr. Our is doing a lot of things to make sure we can be competitive. We’ve got ECR engines, we just moved into the old Richard Petty Motorsports shop in Welcome, North Carolina, right beside Richard Childress Racing, so that’s exciting, and they’re doing the right things. It’s going to be a building process, but we’re looking forward to it, and I think it can be something special.”

Burton became a free agent after Kaulig Racing announced late in the 2021 season that the organization wouldn’t retain the Virginia native’s services despite him earning a playoff-clinching first career Xfinity Series win with the organization earlier in the year at Talladega Superspeedway. Burton went on to collect 16 top-10 finishes – including seven top-five results – on the way to a 10th-place points finish.

“Last year was an up and down year,” Burton said. “We had some highs, but we had a lot of lows. We didn’t get accomplished what I was trying to get accomplished last year with the equipment and everything we had. I was kind of disappointed, to be honest. I wanted to make the Championship 4 and win more races, but I think this year, it’s a different kind of goal.

“We’ve got a newer team. I want to make the playoffs and win a race. That’s kind of my goal this year. I think if we can do that, that would be pretty impressive.”

Unlike at Kaulig Racing where he had just a one-year contract, Burton has a twoyear deal with Our Motorsports.

“I think it helps with getting partners,” he said. “I think it helps me and my family, too, just knowing I have a job for two years. So I think it’s good. I think we can build something around me and get the cars like I want them. It’s a really good situation.”

Joining Burton as a four-race primary sponsor and associate sponsor for the entire 2022 season is State Water Heaters. The Ashland City, Tennessee-based company and leading manufacturer of commercial and residential water heaters has sponsored Burton in the Xfinity Series and NASCAR Camping World Truck Series and followed him to multiple teams over the last several years.

“They have been a great partner of mine and stuck with me,” Burton said. “They’ve just been a heck of a partner, and we do a lot of cool things off the track together as well with their customers and stuff like that, so it’s just been a really good partnership.”

State Water Heaters first teamed up with the Burton family as a primary sponsor of Ward Burton in his final Cup Series season of 2007. What does it say about the company that its relationship with the Burton family stretches back more than a decade-and-a-half?

“I think it shows a couple of things,” Jeb Burton said. “I think it shows that racing programs can work. I think it shows that State believes in what dad and I are doing off the track and on, and they’re just a loyal partner. They’re good people, and they believe in me…without them, I wouldn’t be where I’m at, 100 percent.”

Burton is similarly persuaded he might not be in a full-time ride for the 2022 season without his first ever trip to an Xfinity Series Victory Lane in 2021.

“Winning changes a lot of things,” he said. “It helps with sponsors. I think it helps with your name recognition. I think it helps with everything. Winning helps. I think if I hadn’t won that race, I might not have this opportunity. Winning changes everything.”