Talladega

For the third time this season, NASCAR presented a race worth watching. I am talking about those who demand an entertaining three-hour experience if they are going to spend the time to take it all in. Talladega delivered.

Bristol is not Las Vegas, Phoenix, Fort Worth or Charlotte. There are reasons to go to the Virginia-Tennessee border. The country is beautiful. On Sunday, it appears a lot of people were taking in the scenery. They sure in hell were not at the race track.

Another season has come and gone, along with a few more drivers and fans, to be honest. However, there are some things I have noticed that are on the positive side, though not all would agree.

Then there were eight, as the surviving championship contenders take to the track this weekend at Martinsville. It is damn near over, but that overweight soprano has yet to warble, so we have a few notes to wait for between now and Homestead.

Talladega was a ratings bust. Talladega. For fans who follow the sport, those four Stewart-Haas cars up front, doing what they had to do all day long, was something to behold. For those who simply tune in to watch incredible action, they had to wait for the final 20 laps for the payoff. However, they had to have tuned in to witness either. They did not even bother. That is troublesome.

If only I could time travel. Going back a few days, I could have been able to pin-point exactly what one needed to do to win at Talladega on Sunday.

Flying around in aircraft formation inches apart at 200 mph. That would be good enough to force me into the Depends, especially if I were in the passenger seat. It is a track that causes skid marks to appear everywhere.

Do not count your chickens before they hatch. That was the lesson we got in Dover on Sunday. A lot of things can happen between the time the egg emerges from the backside of the hen to when that little pecker bursts from the shell. A lot of bad things.

On to Dover this Sunday, and down to a dozen championship contenders. Once again, as we enter the second round of eliminations, Kyle Busch and Kevin Harvick look solid. So does Martin Truex Jr. Not so for everyone else.

They thought Talladega was a wild card. Boy, something tells me that Charlotte’s Roval is going to test them like never before. This one makes the World 600 nothing more than a nice test, a rest in some ways, before the storm coming their way on Sunday.