Darlington Raceway may be “too tough to tame,” but there’s nothing quite like watching a NASCAR race at Talladega Superspeedway, where drivers will race the Alabama 500 on Sunday. It’s absolute chaos sometimes, opening the door for just about anyone in the 40-car field to win the second Round of 12 playoff race.
Talladega and Daytona International Speedway are currently the only two tracks that require Cup Series drivers to use restrictor plates, which limit the speed of the cars in the name of safety. Pretty important for two of NASCAR’s longest tracks.
But the plates also make it more challenging for cars to pass or pull away from each other. Drivers race all bunched together, so if one car gets loose, it has the potential to wreck everyone else nearby.
It’s known as “the big one,” and it’s almost impossible to strategize against.
“There’s no right way to do it or wrong way to do it – that’s why so many drivers have been caught in wrecks at Talladega,” Denny Hamlin told For The Win while promoting the No. 11 FedEx at Walgreens Toyota he’ll drive at Martinsville Speedway in a few weeks. “No one has it figured out. And I don’t think that you can figure it out because there are so many moving parts, and there’s many other drivers out there that have their own agenda.
“Unless you cause the wreck yourself, you can’t control it, which is so different in our sport than any other. You normally can capitalize when your opponent makes mistakes, but at Talladega, you can’t. You can get caught in it pretty easily.”
During the GEICO 500 earlier this season, AJ Allmendinger tapped Chase Elliott and sent him flying through the air – Elliott’s goal this weekend is to keep all four tires grounded – causing an 18-car wreck. While Allmendinger found himself upside down on the track, everyone else caught in it was collateral damage.
Elliott in the air during the GEICO 500.
It’s part of the reason why multi-race winners at Talladega are so impressive. Dale Earnhardt Sr. has the most all-time wins at the 2.66-mile track with 10, and eight of them came after the 1988 restrictor plate requirement.
Dale Earnhardt Jr. – looking for his first win since 2015 and what would most likely be his last win before retiring at the end of the season – is tied with Jeff Gordon for second with six wins. Brad Keselowski is the only other active driver near the top, and his four wins have him in a four-way tie for third.
For drivers trying to avoid the big one, trying to stay in front of the field and hoping for the best are really the only things they can do, said Hamlin, who has one career win at Talladega.
“The most challenging part is staying up front simply because there are so many great superspeedway racers out there that know how to work the air as good as you do,” the Joe Gibbs Racing driver said.
“It’s so hard to have an advantage with your equipment at that race track, and so the driver makes up a large part of your superspeedway success. We’ll just do everything we can to make sure we try to put ourselves in the best spot we think is possible at that given time.”
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