A Ford driver has won nine of the last races at Talladega Superspeedway’s massive 2.66-mile high-banked layout where running four-wide at 200 mph is normal.
Ryan Blaney has won the last two races there and Sunday’s YellaWood 500 will be the fourth and final race using the superspeedway race package. It will also be the 31st race of the season and second race during the Round of 12 in NASCAR’s Playoffs.
NASCAR threw a monkey wrench into this round by having a tough final two races starting at a place like Talladega where anyone can win as well as anyone can wreck at any given moment. It gives the drivers an option to lay back to try and stay out of trouble until the final 10 laps, or they can be aggressive in an approach to move up to the front as soon as possible and let all the mess happen behind them when ‘The Big One’ eventually happens.
If one of the Playoff eligible drivers happens to come out of Talladega with his car in one piece to advance into the Round of 8, next up is the road course at Charlotte’s Roval which less than half the field are accomplished road racers. That’s a brutal two-race gauntlet for drivers currently outside the Top-8 in points like Kyle Busch (9 points behind the transfer slot), Clint Bowyer (-18), Aric Almirola (-27), and Austin Dillon (-27).
For those four on the chopping block, they all know winning at Talladega is their best shot to advance and they all have superspeedway wins in their career.
Using Talladega and the Roval to end the Round of 12 may have been an aggressive overreach for madness. But putting that aside, the system worked as it should where drivers are rewarded for gaining as many points as possible during the 26-race regular season. So it may look stupid that Kyle Busch finished sixth in the Las Vegas race last week and already be down 9 points behind the cut. The bottom line is that he should have won a few stages or races in the regular season to protect him, like is the case for Kevin Harvick and Denny Hamlin atop the standings, or win just a race like Kurt Busch did at Las Vegas to advance.
Of the two superspeedway tracks between Daytona and Talladega, it’s Talladega that has proven to be more volatile and at the same time more entertaining. I’m not a fan of the wrecks, but the width of the track is almost twice what Daytona has so there is more room to maneuver and create another racing line. With the cars being more equal on superspeedways, they’re capped at what speeds they can reach, but they can get up to 15 mph faster in a draft with other cars than by themselves. It’s bumper-to-bumper, side-by-side, for 188 crazy laps.
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