It’s not over until the checkered flag waves at Homestead-Miami Speedway, but without a major issue in these next two races, it looks like Kyle Larson will become a three-time NASCAR Cup Series champion.
…and believe it or not, he’s got Talladega to thank for that.
The Elk Grove, California-native pulled off an unreal triumph in Sunday’s YellaWood 500 at the 2.66-mile superspeedway in Talladega, Alabama, recovering from getting shucked out of line off Turn 2 on the final lap (and dropping to 11th), to cross the start-finish line first in his No. 5 HendrickCars.com Chevrolet – a swing of about 30 points in less than 30 seconds.
An unbelievable 71-point afternoon for the defending NASCAR Cup Series champion took a title battle that featured seven drivers within 56 points of the lead heading to Talladega, and absolutely destroyed it, with Larson leaving the track 73 points ahead of Denny Hamlin.
So, why such a dramatic swing? Well, simply put: Talladega.
Christopher Bell was the closest driver to Larson in points entering Sunday’s race, just five markers behind. Unfortunately, the Joe Gibbs Racing driver was the first one to find trouble, crashing on the entrance to pit road in Stage 1.
Both Ryan Blaney and Tyler Reddick got K.O.-ed by a 12-car accident that started at the front of the pack at Lap 133. Then, after surviving almost all afternoon without getting caught up in the carnage, Joey Logano and Chase Briscoe had their days end early courtesy of a 15-car accident at Lap 184.
That’s a resounding SIX of the seven drivers in the title fight entering Sunday’s event at Talladega that found significant issues, and with Kyle Larson winning the race, that’s pretty much all she wrote.
Now, I’m not necessarily saying that Talladega RUINED the championship battle – there are still two races left to go, and anything can happen – but it’s definitely hampered the end-of-season fight that was shaping up between Kyle Larson, Joe Gibbs Racing, Team Penske, and Tyler Reddick.
The outcome of Sunday’s event at Talladega Superspeedway lends itself to a very real question… should a superspeedway be the 34th race in a 36-race season?
It’s Time to Move Talladega’s Second Date
Everybody loves Talladega Superspeedway. It’s NASCAR’s Southern gem.
From the tight three-and-four-wide racing to the electric atmosphere and the party culture of the Talladega Boulevard. It’s a NASCAR classic, and it doesn’t need to go anywhere – except for maybe a couple of weeks (or months) earlier in the season.
The YellaWood 500 at Talladega Superspeedway is currently 34th of 36 points-paying NASCAR Cup Series events, and while the race’s current position was, without a doubt, designed to deliver a lot of late-season excitement with a spot on broadcast television (as one of the last three events of the season), it’s also done a lot of harm to an amazing title battle.
Beginning this year, at the request of the fans and a large part of the industry, NASCAR pivoted its championship format to a modernized version of the Chase (which decided championships from 2004-2013), disposing of the four-round, elimination-style, winner-takes-all Playoffs. That one move brought legitimacy back into the deciding of a champion.
In the now defunct Playoffs, Talladega being the 34th race of the year made sense (or at least it made more sense than it does now) because it created excitement and drama in the penultimate round of the Playoffs and left some championship-favorite drivers with their backs against the wall heading into one final race where a Championship 4 berth could be clinched. But, in this new, much-improved format, all it’s done is take a pickaxe to an otherwise captivating championship battle.
Here’s how I look at it: At Phoenix, Kyle Larson’s No. 5 team dropped the ball in an astounding manner, first by running horribly, and then by compounding that with a bad finish – that, is a failure to thrive and a failure to execute. At Talladega, Larson won the race, while his six other championship combatants all were involved in incidents. Aside from Christopher Bell’s problems entering pit road (which was an execution problem), those were all instances of bad luck.
Yes, luck is absolutely a part of racing. Everybody who competes in NASCAR is aware of that, and at a certain point, you’re just playing the hand that is dealt to you. In an effort to crown the best champion, though, there comes a point where a driver shouldn’t be forced to be lucky, but instead, be forced to be good.
…and that’s not to say that Kyle Larson doesn’t deserve to win the NASCAR Cup Series championship, either. The driver of the No. 5 HendrickCars.com Chevrolet has put together an incredible run in the Chase, with only one finish worse than sixth place. A championship for the No. 5 would be a deserving championship, no question about it.
However, with an updated championship format, should also come an updated way of thinking when it comes to scheduling… so, it’s probably time to move NASCAR’s return trip to Talladega Superspeedway.
For a number of years, including during the first iteration of the Chase, the Fall event at Talladega Superspeedway hovered between the 29th to 32nd event of a 36-race season, and, while maybe not as drastic of a change as is needed, that could be a start.
Let me float another idea: From 1970 to 1996, the NASCAR Winston Cup Series would still run a pair of events at Talladega Superspeedway; they’d run the first event in late April or early May and then return to contest a Summer event in late July or early August. In NASCAR’s current 36-race structure, that would place Talladega events somewhere around the 10th-12th and 20th-22nd events of the season. The heat might be a problem, but at the same time, it may also allow for the race to feature a more handling-centric outcome.
Granted, anywhere that Talladega could (hypothetically) be placed, so that it isn’t the third-to-last event of the NASCAR Cup Series campaign and alter a championship battle with its giant roulette-wheel nature, is a plus.
