While battling for a spot inside of the top three on Sunday in the Rattler 250, sportsmanship prevailed between Harrison Burton and Christian Eckes.
Two extremely good friends outside of the racetrack, Burton and Eckes were duking it out for the third position with seven laps to go when contact created a temporary riff. Burton was holding his line when Eckes dove into the corner and pushed Burton up the track resulting in a sixth place effort by the second-generation driver with a third place car.
Burton confronted Eckes post-race about what happened.
“I was kind of surprised because I know (Christian) doesn’t race like that,” Burton said. “I was probably overreacting a little bit. I hated to make a big scene out of that. I figured it was right for me to go talk to him and get his side of the story.”
“He said that he didn’t mean to and that doesn’t surprise me because Christian is one of my better friends. He’s someone who races me consistently clean. It’s all good between me and him. You aren’t going to see any retaliation from me like Matt Kenseth at Martinsville.”
True to their friendship, Eckes could not agree more with Burton.
“Yeah, we’re good. I ran into him. I got a little bit excited, I guess you could say,” Eckes said. “I hopped on the gas out of the corner and got into him a little bit and shoved him up the track. Completely 100% my fault and I take the blame for it. It just sucks because I would hate to take away a good finish from a guy by doing it that way.”
Late in the race it seemed as if Burton had the faster car, but restarts wouldn’t quite fall to his benefit.
“Yeah, it was really really tough,” Burton said. “I need to work on my restarts. I mean, I feel like all drivers need to work on their restarts. Ty took us to school on restarts today. His car was on a rail all day and once he got that track position, he could just save tires.”
