You don’t have to be from Indiana, Jeff Burton said, to know how much it would mean to win a race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

“For anyone who has any respect for history, when you go through that tunnel, if you don’t get goose bumps that you’re in a special place, something’s wrong,” Burton said. “A lot of great things went on here before NASCAR was here. Any true race fan should have a tremendous amount of respect for that.

“I hope that we add to the history and the heritage of the facility.”

Two Nextel Cup practices are scheduled for Friday afternoon to open Nextel Cup racing’s 12th annual visit to the 2.5-mile motorsports shrine. Qualifying is scheduled for 10 a.m. Saturday, but this is not an impound weekend. Two more practices are scheduled for late Saturday afternoon.

A large number of Cup teams have already put in several hours of testing last month for Sunday’s Allstate 400, the new name for the race known as the Brickyard 400 since the inaugural event in 1994.

Jeff Gordon and his crew kiss the bricks after winning the 2004 Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

Jeff Gordon, who won that first NASCAR race at Indy, as well as last year’s race for his fourth career Indianapolis victory, has actually tested here this year. He came in April to help Goodyear with a tire test on the track’s newly ground racing surface and then returned for one day in July.

“It definitely got a little bit slower and lost some grip, which is what we expected to happen,” Gordon said of the change between his tests. “With the way the track is ground, it has a lot of grip. We’ll see some tire wear there and push the groove out, so hopefully you’ll see more side-by-side racing.”

When Gordon won his fourth Brickyard 400 last year, he joined A.J. Foyt, Al Unser and Rick Mears as the only four-time winners of major events at the track.

“For me, growing up as a kid and watching the Indy 500, I recognize that there’s a difference between the two races,” Gordon said. “It’s not that I wouldn’t want to be compared to A.J., Unser and Mears, it’s just a different race and different circumstances.”

Gordon faces some of his own different circumstances going into Indianapolis this year. He hasn’t finished outside the top 10 in the standings since he was 14th in his rookie season in 1993, but after 20 races this year he’s 15th in the standings.

He’s got six races left to make up a 114-point gap to 10th place in the standings or Gordon will miss out on this year’s Chase for the Nextel Cup.

The next two weeks figure to be important in those efforts, since he’s a four-time winner at Watkins Glen, too.

“This track has been good to us,” Gordon said. “Everywhere we’ve tested this year, we’ve run well. Winning a big race like this definitely can help the morale of the team and build some momentum. Right now we’re looking at a stretch of races coming up that we have to run well to get in the top 10, and Indianapolis is one. It’s an important race for us already, but it’s one that we’d love to win.”

Kevin Harvick is also looking to fight his way into the Chase. He’s 13th after 20 races, 73 points below the cut line coming into a track where he won in 2003.

“The thing I remember the most about winning here was taking the victory lap after the race, seeing all the fans that stayed over and just letting it all sink in,” Harvick said. “Then, after Victory Lane, we went to kiss the bricks. To share that moment with (wife) DeLana and (owner) Richard (Childress) and take it all in for a nice, slow victory lap around the track was probably the most memorable thing of the weekend.

“We put a lot of effort into this race. This is where you bring your next generation of motors, usually, and your best car, and hopefully you bring your ‘A’ game. This is a place everybody wants to win. It’s more than just another race.”

Elliott Sadler hasn’t won at Indianapolis, but he started and finished third in last year’s race in which the No. 38 Ford led 32 laps.

“There’s so much history at this track,” says Sadler, who like Burton is a native of Virginia. “We have more fans here than anywhere else we race. … Ask any team that’s won here how much fun it was and how much emphasis they put on it. I know our team spends just as much time preparing a car here as it does for the Daytona 500 because it just means so much.”