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Rating the Race: Talladega

by Tim Zaegel on October 8th, 2007

Historically, Talladega has been one of those tracks that will either live up to its potential in providing some of the best hard-nosed, hardcore racing of the season … or, it will put you to sleep.  Yet, somehow yesterday’s race fell somewhere right in the middle.  Don’t get me wrong, it was a pretty decent race – it just wasn’t very exciting … at all.

I mean, I’m not particularly a huge fan of watching super speedway racing.  I never have, and likely never will be.  But, I can still distinguish when one of these races should be construed as something exciting to watch and when it shouldn’t.  For instance, Elliott Saddler finishing Talladega by sliding across the finish line on his roof = very exciting.  Greg Biffle winning a race at Daytona on fuel mileage = boring as hell.  So, like I said, I’m not a huge fan of tracks like Talladega, but for some reason I was completely stoked about the race coming into this weekend … and, I left my buddy’s house Sunday evening extremely disappointed.  And, I really don’t know how else to describe it other than “disappointing”.

Think about it … after three races in the Chase, we come to Talladega where the points standings are about as tight as a normal pack of cars on the ‘Dega speedway, but we leave with Team Hendrick beginning to run away with things.  Toyota qualified a lot of drivers at the front of the field, splitting the fans into two groups:  Those who thought this would translate into some great Toyota finishes and those who thought Toyota would be the cause of “the Big One”.  Well, not only was Toyota unable to produce the results they were looking for, but the Big One had nothing to do with the Toyotas and was really lackluster compared to what we’ve grown accustomed to.  Dale Earnhardt Jr came to Alabama one of the odds-on-favorites to win the race, not to mention it was his last race with Tony Eury Jr as members of DEI.  There was a lot of hype around that one, and surely the cousins Junior would add some drama to their story by competing for the win in the final laps of the race … instead, we witnessed Earnhardt’s sixth engine failure of the year about midway through the race.  Kevin Harvick came from very deep in the pack to start the race (I believe he started somewhere around 34th or something), and found himself in sixth place approximately five laps into the race.  Surely he had one of the cars to beat, but alas, Jeff Burton experienced engine troubles, leaving the 29 without a dependable drafting partner.  Not really sure what happened to Harvick’s car between the green and checkered flags, but he wound up coming home in 20th.  The Fords had nothing for the Chevy’s, so we had to rely on Dodge to race them to the checkered flag.

I could go on and on and on with this, but I’m pretty sure that you guys get the picture.  Instead of what should have been a very dramatic race start to finish, instead we were left watching the Hendrick cars lag in the back of the field for the entire day only to gang up on the Penske cars of Kurt Busch and Ryan Newman in the closing laps.  Tony Stewart tried to muscle his way past Gordon and Johnson, but everytime he ducked out of line to try and make a move nobody followed until the 9 car of Kasey Kahne finally supported him … until the last turn.  I mean, that was literally probably about the only exciting part of the race for me.

Again, it was a good race, sure … but, when the series heads to Talladega for the fourth race in the Chase for the Cup, I’m just expecting so much more.  On a scale of 1 to 5, I have to rate this race a 2.

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POSTED IN: NASCAR, Rating the Race