NASCAR attention turns to Talladega

Associated Press

TALLADEGA, Ala.

It’s on to Talladega Superspeedway, where the focus Friday was on engine temperatures and tandem racing and everything that factors into the fast Alabama track.

But as everyone turned their attention to Sunday’s race, there was still a slight hangover from the dramatic decisions that altered NASCAR’s last outing.

A late penalty took Carl Edwards out of contention for the win Saturday night at Richmond, and a caution for debris gave Kyle Busch the opening to take the victory away from Tony Stewart. After finishing third, Stewart complained the debris was nothing more than a plastic bottle that provided zero threat to anyone on the track.

Both drivers left Richmond unhappy with NASCAR, but both had cooled by the time they got to Talladega.

“There is nothing else that I can do,” said Edwards, who was penalized for jumping a restart. “I am satisfied with that personally, that I did everything I could do and that is that.”

Stewart also seemed resigned to simply accepting the final outcome.

“It looked like a bottle to me, but the end result is the same thing: it still cost us an opportunity. It still cost us a win,” Stewart said. “Yes, they did what they needed to do, but you just hate the timing of it. And, you hate that it even happened in the first place.”

Either way, the late-race theatrics had people talking, and that’s what NASCAR needed after a stretch of ho-hum racing. The last month has featured unusually clean, caution-free racing, and the long green-flag runs have stretched the field and eliminated accidents. The last multi-car accident in the Sprint Cup Series was at Martinsville Speedway, four races ago.

Now comes Sunday at Talladega, where it’s unclear what kind of racing fans will see.

The 2.66-mile superspeedway has traditionally been one of the most exciting venues on the NASCAR schedule, in part because of the constant threat of a massive accident that can collect a large portion of the field. The mandated use of restrictor plates at Daytona and Talladega kept the entire 43-car field bunched in a pack, and one wrong move by one driver could trigger “The Big One.”

That changed over the last few years as drivers figured out the fastest way around the track was in a two-car tandem with one driver pushing another. Fans hated the tandem racing, and NASCAR worked tirelessly over the winter to create a rules package that would end the practice. It worked in breaking up the two-car tandems in the Daytona 500, and Sunday might also be void of that style.

In addition to NASCAR setting limits meant to overheat an engine if a car pushes another car for too long, temperatures in the 90s all weekend have drivers unable to test just how long they can push.

“We all know how big of an issue it was to keep the engines cool or the water temp cool [at Daytona],” said Jeff Gordon. “It’s going to be a major issue here. I think that is the first thing that we are going to be working on.”