Harrison Burton Getty 2022 NASCAR Cup Series
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Anyone who chooses to pursue the same profession as their father understands full well the challenges that come with it. The weight of one's last name, the expectations that come with it, and the added burden to prove that you've earned it. Having to work alongside the same people who once knew you only as a child at your father's knee, and trying to get them to see you as a man. The implicit undercurrent of others' eagerness that "You're going to be just like your father."

At 21 years old, this is the path that Harrison Burton has taken. The son of longtime NASCAR star Jeff Burton is at the end of his rookie season as a Cup driver, one which has featured a full gauntlet of ups and downs that have ranged from finishing third at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway to going upside down while challenging for the lead in the Daytona 500.

A Rookie of the Year title isn't in the cards for Burton -- that honor will go to Austin Cindric, who basically ended that race with a Daytona 500 win on his way to making the playoffs. But recent weeks have seen Burton and his Wood Brothers Racing team begin to strengthen their foundation for 2023. He led a season-high 15 laps at Texas, has two top 10 qualifying efforts in the last three races, and enjoyed a strong weekend at Martinsville that saw him finish 11th after starting 10th.

"I really only feel like I've started to kind of get a grasp on the car in the latter half of the season here. And I feel like our performance has been getting better," Burton told CBS Sports at Martinsville. "It's such a different car to drive than the other cars, and everyone had that experience. But for whatever reason, it took me a little bit to feel what I was looking for.

"I'm starting to feel that now, I'm starting to qualify a lot better, which is really important. In trying to get the next round and qualify in the top 10 really sets your weekend up a whole lot better. For us it's just been about making every stage of the weekend better and trying to find more speed. And we found the speed recently, and now we just need to work on our execution in the race. With speed, that gets a lot easier. That's for sure."

Growing up in a racing family, there was a time where racing was something Burton did simply for fun and simply to give what his father did for a living a try. After he started winning in late models while barely out of his pre-teens, Burton ended up on the fast track to racing at NASCAR's highest level -- a place where sometimes he's known as Jeff Burton's son first and Harrison Burton second.

That's something that everyone who follows a parent into a line of work handles differently. Some are sensitive towards what the perception of them is, and can even be desperate to separate themselves and prove that they're a different person than their father is.

But Burton is proud of who his father is, and believes that the 21-time Cup Series winner set a great example of hard work that he seeks to emulate -- even if the generational difference between the two has dictated that Harrison is not a carbon copy of the racer his old man was.

"I feel like I love the sport for different reasons than he does," Burton said. "He always loved to try and come up with a better setup than somebody else and help the crew chief build a setup on the racecar. And in the early part of his career, that's what he really focused on. And then later in his career, it kind of got more towards the engineering world that we're in now where the people that are coming up with setups and aero platforms and all this stuff are so much smarter than what we are just because of their education. And they're just really smart people.

"For me, I can work on a late model and I can go turn wrenches on cars, but I can't keep up with a world-class race engineer, right? There's no way. So I've kind of turned to focus on, as a racecar driver I guess I'll say, I focused on being a racecar driver and – obviously knowing what's going on underneath the car – but not necessarily making that my main job. My main job is to be the best driver I can be by watching data, watching film. So as drivers, that's kind of what separates us."

As far as what separates Harrison the man from Jeff the man, The younger Burton acknowledges that he does not yet know for certain who he is as a person, as he is still coming of age at 21 and trying to figure out who his ideal self is and what that person looks like. What Burton has going for him in that pursuit is that he is very secure in who he is -- the label of "Jeff Burton's son" does not bother him. 

"I am my Dad's son. I'm proud of that. But I think that separation comes with winning races and winning championships and doing things that you need to do to stay around for a long time in this sport -- And that's just go and win," Burton said. "You look at Chase Elliott – You don't really hear 'That's Bill Elliott's son' anymore, right? You used to. It's all he heard when he was young ... I'm sure he still hears that, but now he's just Chase Elliott. And that comes with him being his own person, but also it comes with him winning races. Or Ryan Blaney. Same thing. He started to win a lot of races and be really, really fast, and now all of a sudden he's just Ryan Blaney.

"So the effort to separate yourself isn't necessarily an intentional one. I think it's just one that comes with success and making your own name by kind of the only thing that matters in this sport, and that's winning races. At the end of the day, you can talk all you want about doing this or doing that to be different and blah blah blah. But it really doesn't matter. The only thing that matters, and will continue to matter in this sport, is results. Which is good. That's what it should be."

Results, whether in late models or in ARCA or in the NASCAR Xfinity Series, are what got Harrison Burton to the point that he is completing his first full season of Cup six years after first showing up in the Truck Series. And results -- rather than being Jeff's son or even just a member of the Burton racing family -- are what Burton knows will ensure that he has a future as a NASCAR driver. Or will at least allow him to be satisfied no matter what his next six years as a racecar driver have to offer him.

"I know I have the work ethic to succeed in this sport, I know I put in the work and I can sleep every night and know that I put my best foot forward and tried to win as soon and as often as I could," Burton said. "And other than that, whatever happens happens.

"You just have to put the effort in, and then see what happens. My perfect world I could draw it up in a million different ways, but really in six years – If I'm in the sport still or if I'm out of the sport – I want to know that I did all I could to win. That's pretty easy to control, so I'll just try and control that."