Talladega a wild card equalizer
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The score is tied 3-3 between Kyle Busch and Kevin Harvick in the race for hottest driver in NASCAR. Each has won three races in a row and has been nearly unbeatable through the first nine races of the season.
Up next, though, is Talladega Superspeedway, a wild-card race track that could even the field.
It means Jimmie Johnson, mired in a 32-race losing streak, has a chance to snap the longest winless streak of his career.
Or Ricky Stenhouse Jr. could defend last year’s Talladega victory, the first Cup win of his career.
Austin Dillon won the season-opening Daytona 500, and he’s got as good a chance as anyone to win Sunday. Same goes for Brad Keselowski, considered by most of his peers the best restrictorplate racer in the field right now.
Busch goes to Alabama as the hottest driver in the series and the Cup Series points leader. He’s won the last three races — at Texas, Bristol Motor Speedway and Richmond — and has three runner-up finishes through nine races.
“Pretty cool to win three in a row,”
Busch said after Saturday night’s victory at Richmond. “Next week we go to Talladega. I think it’s easier to win the Powerball than win at Talladega. We’ll give it a go anyway, see what we get.”
Talladega should be a crapshoot with zero guarantees. It was the Team Penske trio of Keselowski, Joey Logano and Ryan Blaney that led Speedweeks in Daytona and cemented themselves as the favourites for the 500. But Keselowski was wrecked out of the race, Blaney was lost in traffic after leading a race-high 118 laps and Logano led the Penske charge with a disappointing
fourth-place finish.
With the Penske cars out of contention, the closing laps belonged to resurgent Stewart-Haas Racing. Both Kurt Busch and Aric Almirola had a shot to win the Daytona 500 in overtime and both were wrecked — Almirola by Dillon as they raced for the checkered flag. Dillon led just one lap, the final one, to earn his Daytona 500 victory.
Because Daytona and Talladega are so similar in speed, style and the way the field races in a pack, the dominance shown so far this season by Busch and Harvick may not matter.