It was a banner day for Jeb Burton and Jordan Anderson Racing on Aug. 30 at Portland International Raceway.
Jeb finished seventh, his best result in the NASCAR Xfinity Series since running second at Talladega Superspeedway in April. Teammates Austin Green and Blaine Perkins finished just behind Burton in eighth and ninth. It was a critical result for the No. 27 as he tried to inch closer to the cut line before the final race of the regular season at World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway.
The man he’s chasing is his cousin, Harrison Burton. Harrison started in the rear, spun from the middle of the pack, got back his positions and gave them all up again. Then, Harrison took tires and somehow wound up 12th after a pair of wild restarts late. Jeb had only cut the deficit to his cousin by five, leaving the gap a daunting 31 points with only one race left to go.
“Harrison ran like [expletive] all day, from what I heard, and then he put on tires,” Jeb said. “He’s got the golden horseshoe. I told him. It’s just his time so good for them. It is what it is. We’ve got a shot.”
It’s been that kind of season for both of them. What should have been moments to celebrate for Jeb have been overshadowed by what could have been, like when he lost that April Talladega race by inches to Austin Hill.
On the other end of the spectrum, Harrison has somehow turned bad days into manageable ones. Despite an early spin and fiberglass being launched into his neck in the Aug. 22 race at Daytona International Speedway, he limited damage to his bubble standing with a 16th-place finish.
“It’s been like that all year, really,” Harrison said after Portland. “We’ve had a knack for that. It’s something this team is strong at. We’ve been fortunate to make the right calls in times like this to salvage our day. Then again, I feel like on our best days we’ve thrown away some points. It all evens out and certainly we were fortunate to finish better than where we ran.”
During an era where NASCAR has tried to make winning the only thing that matters, the Burtons and their respective teams have mastered the craft every fellow mid-tier Xfinity team has tried to: the art of the good points day.
Jeb Burton put Jordan Anderson Racing’s Xfinity program on the map in 2023 with a win at Talladega but saw a major step back in 2024 with eight DNFs and finishes of 20th or worse in half of his starts.
In 2025, he’s corrected all the mistakes of the previous year. Jeb and Carson Kvapil are the only drivers who’ve run all 25 races this season and not registered a DNF. Jeb has six top-10 finishes compared to just five outside the top 20. While he’s rarely been in competition to win, the veteran has done what some drivers in better equipment haven’t. He hasn’t shot himself in the foot with mistakes.
Harrison Burton, meanwhile, has made mistakes aplenty throughout this season, but recovered with the help of crew chief Danny Efland. Harrison, like his brother, and AM Racing, like JAR, don’t have the speed to compete on a weekly basis with top-flight teams but have found a way to stand out. It’s an amazing step back toward respectability for this program after struggling much of last season with rookie Hailie Deegan.
This year, it’s helped AM to simply finish races. Harrison’s lone DNF of the season came at Circuit of the Americas due to a mechanical issue. Before that, Efland’s pit strategy netted them a stage one win that provided a nice safety net. Harrison’s second stage victory came at Darlington Raceway, where Efland’s decision to pit for tires early allowed Harrison to dice through the field and win stage one.
In many ways, both sons are playing similar roles to what their fathers did during their NASCAR Cup Series careers. Jeff Burton, Harrison’s dad, was the model of consistency, finishing inside the top 10 almost 37 percent of the time he started a Cup race. Even through a tumultuous end to his stint at Roush Racing and the twilight of his career, Jeff finished in the top 20 in the point standings 17 years in a row.
Ward Burton never got as competitive of a Cup ride as his brother, but he still made the most of his time with Bill Davis Racing. He won the 2001 Southern 500 and the 2002 Daytona 500 on top of back-to-back seasons of finishing inside the top 10 in points, doing so in 2000 and 2001.
Just like their dads, these Burtons haven’t wavered through hard times. Harrison got fired from his Cup ride with Wood Brothers Racing last season before winning the team’s 100th event. Jeb hadn’t been on the same NASCAR team two years in a row until he arrived at Jordan Anderson Racing and won at Talladega in 2023.
Now, one of them is all but guaranteed a trip back to the Xfinity Series playoffs. Unless there’s a new winner below both of them in the standings, we’ll see a Burton fight for the championship.
But regardless of what happens this weekend and what the playoff picture looks like, the Burton cousins’ resilience has put them in this position ahead of higher-funded, more seasoned, or much-hyped teams. One of their playoff hopes will likely end this weekend, but this year could be a launching pad for both toward even better days.
James Krause joined Frontstretch in March 2024 as a contributor. Krause was born and raised in Illinois and graduated from Northern Illinois University. He currently works in La Crosse, Wisconsin as a local sports reporter, including local short track racing. Outside of racing, Krause loves to keep up with football, music, anime and video games.