There is perhaps no driver that has experienced more of a roller coaster NASCAR career in the last five years than second-generation racer Harrison Burton.
In 2020, the Huntersville, N.C. native was one of the most exciting driving prospects in the sport of stock car racing. Then driving for Joe Gibbs Racing in the storied No. 20 NASCAR Xfinity Series entry, Burton amassed four wins, 15 top fives and 22 top 10s.
Being the lead driver among the Joe Gibbs talent pipeline and garnering the success that is supposed to come with it, Burton’s racing future and NASCAR Cup Series potential was bright.
Yet four years later, he’s back in Xfinity – this time with small team AM Racing – trying to rebuild his path to the Cup Series.
“I think to get back, I needed to do something more than just win two races in a Gibbs car,” Burton told Frontstretch. “I needed to come and prove to myself, prove to this race team and prove to everyone that I can help turn a race team around. I think there’s value in that.”
Throughout the 14 races so far in 2025, Burton and the No. 25 crew have amassed the team’s second top five in its history and six additional top-10 finishes – the same amount he earned in his 108 Cup Series starts with the Wood Brothers.
It isn’t the Joe Gibbs Racing car he had only four years earlier, but it’s enough to put him back in the racing spotlight, and all the while have fun while doing it.
“It’s been rewarding to have signs of that start to show, right?” Burton said. “We’re starting to run better and better and better, and it’s encouraging, and it’s fun. I mean, I feel like I’m having some of the most fun I’ve had in years racing”
After his promotion to the Cup Series ranks in 2022 with Wood Brothers Racing, young Burton’s career waned. In his first two full-time seasons, he and the historic No. 21 entry garnered only a total of one top five and four top 10s throughout 72 entries – a far cry from the three top fives and nine top 10s the team earned in 2021 alone.
By the halfway mark of the 2024 season, not much had changed, and Burton finally received the call that he dreaded, yet expected. WBR was letting him go.
“They were really up front with me, which I respected,” Burton recalled. “I knew I had to do something good soon to start that year. We kind of got off on the wrong foot. I kind of knew at the start of that season, so I was aware that it was a possibility.
“We, for whatever reason, just couldn’t get into a role the way we needed to. The Wood family still is great to me. They were up front with me and did it very professionally.”
Despite the announcement that he wouldn’t return in 2025, the Wood Brothers wanted to end Burton’s tenure with them on a high note. However, with two-and-a-half season’s worth of lacking success, Burton was unlikely to secure a ride for 2025 easily without an improbable Cup race victory.
Yet, with a last-lap push at Daytona International Speedway in August, he and the Wood Brothers Racing team did the unthinkable when he won on stock car racing’s biggest stage. What’s more, it was the Wood Brothers’ long-awaited 100th Cup victory.
“My first goal when I got hired was to win the 100th race,” Burton said. “That was what I wanted. I was really determined to do that. … I think that was why all those emotions of winning Daytona were there. … There was a lot of questions for all those guys like [crew chief] Jeremy Bullins. He’s now on Brad [Keselowski]‘s car, so there was a lot of movement still going on with that group.
“They could have pointed a finger at me, but they just buckled down and said, ‘Let’s go make the best out of this opportunity,’ and honestly, that’s what helped me land another opportunity, was those last few weeks.”
While it wasn’t enough to secure a Cup ride for 2025, Burton received the call from AM Racing, a small Xfinity Series team that began only in 2023 and had only earned a single top-five result since.
But it was enough for a young man that just wanted to do what he loved.
“That hunger and drive to get back and feel like I’ve maybe made a misstep in my career,” Burton said. “Now I have this opportunity to get it back right. That’s a really cool feeling. It’s what wakes you up in the morning. You’re like, ‘let’s go.’ I mean, it’s why I love the sport is just having a chance, and you never know.”
So, where does he go from here?
For almost all NASCAR drivers, the end game is nearly always a return to the Cup Series — the pinnacle of the sport — and that’s precisely where Burton is aiming to return in five years.
“I want to race in Cup,” Burton said. “I’m really hungry about that. I think I have the right tools. I just have to make the most of it.”
However, the second-generation racer does have one resource he possesses that others don’t: a NASCAR Hall of Fame-nominee father that’s been there and done that in Jeff Burton.
“I mean, he’s been there and done that,” Burton said of his 21-time race-winning father. “He’s been fired from jobs before, too, which is crazy to me to hear that. I thought his career was just smooth and everything went good and that was that. But he said, ‘Oh, no, I’ve lost a job before. I’ve not known where I was going to be the next year a lot in my career,’ and he’s helped me a lot just working through that mentally and understand that the only thing you can control is right now.”
Yet despite the family name, the road to return will be harder this time. With no backing from high-end race teams or clear promotion in sight, his results will have to do the talking for him.
But that challenge is what he’s looking for.
“If I can be a part of turning this team around from where they were last year, that shows more and will make me a better driver than going to Gibbs,” Burton said. “I’ve done that with Gibbs, and it was challenging, don’t get me wrong. Any race win is challenging.
“But the underdog mentality is a really fun one to have. If it’s not an excuse, it’s fun. Whenever you hear a guy, ‘I don’t have this. I don’t have that,’ that’s when it’s not fun, but when it’s, ‘Hey, we have a group that’s trying to win races. We’re challenging these areas. What can we do about it?’ That’s where it gets fun, and that’s what I think we’ve got going here, which is really special.”
So far in 2025, he’s off to a pretty good start.
Dalton Hopkins began writing for Frontstretch in April 2021. Currently, he is the lead writer for the weekly Thinkin' Out Loud column, co-host of the Frontstretch Happy Hour podcast, and one of our lead reporters. Beforehand, he wrote for IMSA shortly after graduating from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in 2019. Simultaneously, he also serves as a Captain in the US Army.
Follow Dalton on Twitter @PitLaneCPT