Jeff Burton

Jeff Burton: We lost three very young, very talented drivers in a really short time and that had a lot of influence, too. Certainly Dale's death was a huge smack in the face to everybody, but all those deaths in such a short period of time was awful. It forced people to look at it and say, 'Hey, this isn't a coincidence. There's something going on.'

Jeff Burton: When I came into the sport, rookies didn't drive good race cars. You drove junk. Rookies don't step in driving junk anymore. They step in driving top cars because there is no junk. They step in driving really, really good stuff.

Jeff Burton: Racing is safer today than it was five years ago, but we didn't know it. People ask me, 'Do you feel safer today in a race car than you did five years ago?' No, I don't. I felt safe five years ago. I thought we were doing all we could do. I didn't know we could do more.