Who?

Surely, I must be too sleep-deprived or dreaming too much about Thanksgiving turkey to think clearly.

This, after all, is the same Jeff Burton who failed to win a race, placed a disappointing 17th in the 2009 standings and failed to make NASCAR’s 10-race championship playoff for the first time in four seasons.

Is it really reasonable to consider him the hottest driver in the Sprint Cup Series outside of arguably the recent season’s top two performers?

Oh, yeah.

It’s not only reasonable; it’s downright hard to deny. Over the last four races of 2009, Burton ran as well as anyone in the Cup series. And he ran like the Burton of old – methodical, consistent and close to the front.

And for the first time in a long while, the 42-year-old driver appears to have that air of confidence that he sorely lacked for much of the season. Of course, finishing out a campaign with four top-10s, including two runnerup finishes in as many weeks, has a way of putting a bounce back in a driver’s step.

So it’s no wonder Burton sounded particularly upbeat after finishing second in Sunday’s season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway. With a little help from a caution flag in the closing laps, Burton might have even chased down race winner Hamlin.

Ditto for the previous week at Phoenix International Raceway, where he finished a distant second to Johnson. But whether a late yellow flag would have changed the final two outcomes or not, the fact remains that Burton and his No. 31 Richard Childress Racing team are much improved from where they were most of the season.

So why the late surge? Crew chief Todd Berrier likely has the most to do with it.

It should come as no surprise that Burton’s up-tick in performance just happened to coincide with Berrier’s appointment to crew chief on the No. 31 team for the last four races.

Berrier, who had previously been paired with RCR driver Casey Mears, is no slouch among the fraternity of Sprint Cup pit bosses. Just as Burton is still the same driver who scored 21 wins from 1997 to 2008, Berrier is the same crew chief who guided RCR’s Kevin Harvick to wins in the 2007 Daytona 500 and the 2003 Brickyard 400.

Berrier, who has been at RCR since 1994, has 19 victories in NASCAR’s three national touring series, including eight with Harvick at the Cup level. Berrier started out the year with Harvick but was reassigned to Mears’ team in May as part of an inner-company crew swap.

But after the appointment of long-time Burton crew chief Scott Miller to competition director at RCR, Berrier was teamed with the veteran driver. And the two appear to have found instant chemistry.

Perhaps Berrier is a better fit for Burton, whose polite, mild-mannered style mirrors his own, than the more outspoken Harvick or the perennially underachieving Mears.

In any case, Burton seems to have quietly rekindled some of the magic that was missing at RCR throughout most of 2009, a season in which none of the organization’s four drivers made the Chase For The Sprint Cup or went to victory lane.

Does Burton’s turnaround signal a stout 2010?

Don’t bet against it. But as a veteran who has seen a little bit of everything in NASCAR, he’s cautious when predicting what his surge could mean for next season.

“It is always better to run well, there is no question about that,” Burton said after his runner-up finish at Homestead. “What we have to do is keep working hard and spend this winter improving. I can assure that all of our competitors are going to improve, and we will have to do the same thing.”

Burton is certainly headed in the right direction after going 18 races without a top-10 from mid-June to late October.

While they may not be ready to challenge Johnson, Hamlin and a handful of other drivers just yet, Burton and Berrier are building for the future. And that’s what is important.

Because how a driver finishes a season says a lot more about where he stands going into the winter than how he started the season. At the same time, how a driver finishes a season can be a springboard to a strong start to the next one.

Expect no less from Burton.

To view Jared Turner's commentary that appeared in Wednesday's SceneDaily.com click here