The first quarter of the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series season is complete, leading stock car racing’s best to the behemoth Talladega Superspeedway in Lincoln, Alabama.
A tricky race last weekend exhibited the faults of both the NextGen car and Texas Motor Speedway as the race reached a staggering amount of cautions, the flagstand official waving the yellow 16 times for 72 laps.
This means the race was under caution for over a quarter of its advertised distance as Texas’ unique track surface would not allow the NextGen car to run the high side in turns 3 & 4.
You can read a more detailed breakdown of events in my article from last Monday. The most important story of the weekend for most was the victor: Chase Elliott.
Elliott and crew chief Alan Gustafson stayed out long on the first round of green flag stops and caught a break when turn 4 claimed its first victim: Jimmie Johnson.
The outside groove in turn 4 caused five more yellows throughout the race, ruining potentially great runs for a large number of drivers.
After the race was sent into Overtime due to a Denny Hamlin spin, Elliott retained the lead on the following two restarts to claim his first Cup Series win in nearly a year-and-a-half.
The 28-year-old secured a playoff spot for his #9 team, becoming Rick Hendrick’s third playoff team with 17 races left in the regular season.
While you’ll hear a lot of Texans say, “Everything’s bigger in Texas!”, the 1.44-mile Texas Motor Speedway is over a mile shorter in length than Talladega, the Alabama track measuring in at 2.66 miles.
Much like the racing fans see at its sister track in Daytona, Talladega offers fans a full-throttle, action-packed event that’ll produce its fair share of thrills and spills.
Opened in 1969 to a slew of safety concerns and controversy, Richard Brickhouse claimed Dega’s inaugural victory in an equally-controversial fashion over Jim Vandiver, a result Vandiver disputed for years afterwards.
This S1apSh0es video does a great job of explaining this situation in full.
The track overcame the criticisms to become one of the most-beloved (and feared) venues on the NASCAR calendar for fans and some of the drivers as well.
One of Talladega’s biggest features is its track width as the surface spreads out to a comfortable 48 feet from the infamous yellow line to the outside wall, giving drivers ample room to move around and make up ground.
The lap starts as the driver rolls through the front stretch trioval, rapidly approaching the daring slopes ahead.
Dega’s high 33 degrees banked turns 1 & 2 loom over the speedway, the site of a tremendous amount of horrific incidents. After surviving that rollercoaster ride, cars will merge onto the Talladega Superstretch.
Listed as one of the sport’s longest straightaways, Talladega’s 4000-feet back straight played host to Ryan Blaney’s winning move in the most recent race here, following in the footsteps of legends before him by crossing over Kevin Harvick on the final lap.
An eternity has gone by before drivers are met by the similarly-grueling turns 3 & 4, cars ripping through all lanes in an effort to find a couple more hundredths and thousandths of a second.
If last week’s Xfinity Series finish is indicative of anything, even small gains produce extraordinary payoffs.
From there, drivers will run down the hill on the exit of turn 4 as they approach the trioval yet again until crossing the finish line, hurtling by at breakneck speeds for 500 miles as 37 other drivers buzz around them.
Speaking of the Xfinity Series, congratulations to Jesse Love on earning his first career Xfinity Series victory yesterday after making it almost 60 laps on his final tank of fuel.
Now that you’re up to speed on the track, let’s shift gears over to the forecast and fast facts.
The Weather & Fast Facts
NASCAR has fought tooth and nail with Mother Nature in the American south a number of times. This same weekend saw rain four times over the last decade with none of those instances coming in the last three years.
That short streak looks to be broken this weekend as a dark cloud has hung over NASCAR’s largest oval all weekend, the threat of rain sitting menacingly over a fierce pack of screaming cars.
As the day has progressed, it appears the race will make its initial green flag start time of 3pm Eastern Time today on FOX for 188 laps and 500 miles of foot-to-the-floor mayhem.
This race sees an average of 7 cautions that slow the field for roughly 31 laps with three races at the track being abbreviated by last-lap cautions, including last year’s double-overtime race. In fact, three of the last four spring events came down to an Overtime finish, so that could offer even more destruction for the drivers and teams.
A typical day at Talladega runs for three-and-a-half hours, so if you have something to do, get it done before heading into the track. You won’t want to miss a thing!
The Odds
This week’s odds breakdown features two unique changes.
For this week, I will be using a number generator to select my picks as Talladega is impossible to predict. I’ll take those results and do my best to create a case for them winning the race.
The permanent change revolves around the site I use to quote betting lines. Despite BetMGM’s accessible and simple service, the NASCAR Almanac now showcases odds from the folks over at DraftKings.
Without any further ado, the randomizer’s first pick is Brad Keselowski (+1100). A master of superspeedway racing, Brad Keselowski won this race to earn his first career win all the way back in 2009.
That was just Brad’s first of six wins at the hallowed Alabama circuit, his most recent coming in 2021 with team owner Roger Penske. Now that Brad controls his own race team, it’s time for the former champion to take the reigns of the field and win his first race in three years.
The next pick made by the randomizer is none other than Austin Dillon (+4000). Grandson of team owner Richard Childress, Dillon shows flashes of greatness at the sport’s largest facilities, claiming two wins in Daytona in 2018 and 2022.
Kyle Busch became Dillon’s teammate to start last season, and the 33-year-old struggled through last season and the early part of this one playing second fiddle to the two-time champ. In desperate need of a victory for himself and RCR, expect Dillon to take no prisoners as he navigates toward the front.
Keselowski’s teammate Chris Buescher (+2000) takes the third spot in the randomizer’s order. The Texan opened 2024 with a number of modest showings, much like a driver that used to occupy the RFK #17.
Buescher flexes his muscle often on the “plate” tracks, ending the regular season with a Daytona victory last season and always finding his Ford at the top of the scoring pylon (oops.) Whether it’s Keselowski or Buescher is anyone’s guess, but it would be no surprise to see either car in victory lane today.
Yet another Ford logs into the randomizer’s list with Harrison Burton (+10000) occupying the fourth spot. The 23-year-old upstart’s Cup career could be described as trying, failing to show much of the talent he exuded in the Xfinity Series at Joe Gibbs Racing because of a supremely-talented Cup field.
Harrison’s #21 team, operated by the illustrious Wood Brothers, is hunting the organization’s 100th victory, and with Burton hungry to prove he belongs, today’s race might satiate their appetites.
Finally, 23XI’s Bubba Wallace (+1200) rounds out the randomizer’s top-5. The driver of the #23 Leidos Toyota experienced both career highs and lows at the iconic Talladega Superspeedway, the highest of highs coming in the fall of 2021 when he claimed his first career victory here.
The Alabama-born driver returns to his homeland in search of his first victory since his critic-silencing win at Kansas in fall 2022. After last season’s bitter defeat in this event, look for Bubba to bounce back in a big way.
Writer’s Pick
I will keep this section brief because predicting these races is virtually impossible, but Ross Chastain is my pick to win today’s GEICO 500.
The Trackhouse Racing star solidified himself as a championship contender in 2022 by notching his second career win at Dega on a last-lap pass of Erik Jones with the checkered flag in sight.
With Chastain’s deft (and fearless) driving at superspeedways, the Floridian wants to secure a spot in the Playoffs early, and joining teammate Daniel Suárez is only 188(?) laps away.
(Top Photo Credit: Getty Images)
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