Why Talladega is dangerous and frustrating, but always spectacular
It was high drama at Talladega Superspeedway in April 2009, when Brad Keselowski outfoxed Carl Edwards and won his first NASCAR Sprint Cup race and the first for then-car owner James Finch.
Finch had labored unsuccessfully since 1990 to put a car in Victory Lane and then suddenly on that spring day, it came good for him at Talladega.
On the last lap of that race, Keselowski and Edwards made contact racing to the start-finish line.
Keselowski won, Edwards had a horrifying flip onto Ryan Newman's car and then into the catchfence and afterwards all hell broke loose. Edwards actually got out of his car and ran to the finish line like he was Ricky Bobby in "Talladega Nights."
David Poole, the fiery and brilliant NASCAR writer for the Charlotte Observer, wrote a column savaging the track and essentially demanding it be torn down because it was just too dangerous.
Less than two days later, Poole was dead of a heart attack.
Since that time, we've seen all manner of madness at Talladega -- Jimmie Johnson winning the closest race in NASCAR history in 2011 with the top eight cars finishing within 0.2 seconds of each other, and Tony Stewart causing a 25-car accident trying to block Michael Waltrip on the last lap in 2012. And who can forget Stewart's epic rant, demanding that drivers wreck more cars to give fans their money's worth?
Going back a few years, there was that time in 2006, when on the last lap Brian Vickers hit Jimmie Johnson and shoved him into Dale Earnhardt Jr., the two cars spinning out as Vickers drove by to win his first Cup race.
Last fall, it was the restart-that-wasn't-a-restart and then Kevin Harvick hitting Trevor Bayne, wadding up the field and allowing Joey Logano to steal the victory over Earnhardt. That shemozzle had fans seemingly ready to riot.
Virtually every race weekend at Talladega there are dozens of wrecked cars worth millions of dollars, angry drivers, pissed off crew chiefs and lots of finger-pointing, name-calling and blame-assigning. It is infuriating to see the best drivers in the world unable to complete a race without someone putting 20 others in harm's way.
Talladega is maddening that way, maddening in a way no other track in NASCAR is. At least once every weekend, I'm convinced Poole was right, that this place ought to be torn to the ground and plowed into a cotton field.
And then something happens to remind me that Talladega is the one place in all of NASCAR that consistently produces high drama and great stories like nowhere else.
Three years ago, it was David Ragan and David Gilliland hooking up at the end of the Talladega race to finish 1-2 and give car owner Bob Jenkins his first -- and still only -- NASCAR Sprint Cup race victory in more than 400 starts.
That's the thing about Talladega -- for all its controversies, fights and feuds, it remains one of the few tracks where little guys can win, and for that it deserves its place in the NASCAR schedule.
Ragan isn't the only long shot winner the track has produced. Look it up and you'll see names like Lenny Pond, Bobby Hillin Jr., Ron Bouchard and Phil Parsons, among others, as past Talladega winners.
My head tells me Sunday's GEICO 500 will likely be another Clash of the Titans, among Joe Gibbs Racing, Hendrick Motorsports, Stewart-Haas Racing and Team Penske.
But my heart keeps thinking, wouldn't it be cool if we have one of those magical races where a David comes out of nowhere to steal the thunder from all the Goliaths of the sport?
Two Davids hooked up to do just that three years ago, and Keselowski did it in '09, long before he was a star and a champion.
It would really be something special if the same kind of thing happens again on Sunday. We'll see.
