Come Monday of every race week, the race fans will email, tweet or ask me on the street, “So who do you like this week?” My normal response is, “Let’s wait a get a couple practice sessions in and then I’ll have a better answer for you.”
Well, that answer never really works where we are racing this weekend — Talladega Superspeedway.
It doesn’t matter if we are six days out — six hours out or even six laps from the end of that race; there simply is no way to tell you who the favorite to win that race is. I’ve always said it’s wide open to who can win. If your engine cranks when they say, “Drivers start your engines,” at Talladega, then each of the 43 drivers can be a player.
Now sure, we all know it is still very tough to beat the mega-teams, but the restrictor-plate tracks like Talladega are known as the great equalizer. It’s wide open and anything can happen — and usually does happen. Go back two years ago when David Ragan shocked everyone by winning the race. How about a young man by the name of Brad Keselowski driving for James Finch in 2009 taking the checkered flag? Or if you look at the Daytona 500 back in 2011, a young man by the name of Trevor Bayne burst on the scene by winning that race, and it continues to be the only top-five finish of his career.
For the lack of a better term, Talladega is a place where the smaller, underfunded teams are on equal footing to the mega-teams and can steal a win. The biggest thing that goes with not only winning is it all but locks you into the 2015 Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup. The other thing that flies under the radar to a certain extent is there are still two spots available for the 2015 Sprint All-Star Race. If we have a new winner this weekend and next weekend and neither is already in the all-star race, then they now join that elite race on Saturday evening, May 16.
So, yes, this weekend at Talladega is the great equalizer. I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to see someone like Casey Mears, who has run awfully well the last couple years there in that No. 13 car, can get to Victory Lane. Don’t discount our FOX NASCAR colleague Michael Waltrip, who will be back behind the wheel this weekend, as a real contender for the win. We all know he is a master at the restrictor-plate races, and there’s nothing saying he couldn’t do it again Sunday.
