Talladega Viewer's Guide
Steve Byrnes / FOXSports.com
With the Chase for the Nextel Cup 18 races away, some teams are bordering on desperation. Since he finished 7th in the Daytona 500, Kasey Kahne's best finish is 19th at Bristol. Owner Ray Evernham has said that they won't contend for a championship until they improve on restrictor plate tracks.
Darrell Waltrip says desperate times require desperate measures, and desperate men do desperate things. We're past the point when teams can say they have to be careful at Talladega because you can be up front or in the back and get wrecked. The teams struggling that are struggling to get into the top 35 and stay there just have to finish the race.
Who to Watch
# Jeff Gordon: With momentum following a win last week at Phoenix, Gordon won this race two years ago.
# Tony Stewart: Strong at Daytona until he was the first car crashed out of the race, there's a little bit of irony with Stewart. In 2002, he finished 43rd in the Daytona 500, too, and he came back and won the championship that year.
# Dale Earnhardt Jr.: His father is the master at Talladega with 10 wins, and Dale Jr. is second on the all-time list with five victories. He's due, too, after having a great race car and getting crashed in Texas, and then he got trapped in the pits at Phoenix.
# Jamie McMurray: Although he finished 31st at Daytona, McMurray ran as high as third in the 500. He's my sleeper pick this week.
# Kyle Busch: The No. 5 was a great race car at Daytona. He didn't have the finish to show for it, but he had a great piece so he should be one to watch on Sunday.
What to Watch
# On the offensive: Racing at Talladega is like a high-scoring football game. It's the epitome of a track meet, and it's going to be wide open. It would be easier to say who aren't we going to watch.
# Hanging back: I've seen Dale Jarrett used different strategy. He won at Talladega, leading the very last lap in the October race a couple of years ago. Sometimes he hangs near the back. The Yates cars are always strong on the restrictor plate tracks. Gilliland and Rudd both qualified well at Daytona. For Dale Jarrett, I've seen him use different strategies.
# Coopetition: You'll see two-tire stops and drivers running and pitting together so they won't lose momentum on pit road. You'll see wheeling and dealing in the pits, on the racetrack and atop the spotters' tower.
# 'Getting a good suck:' You'll hear drivers talk about getting a good suck or a good pull from the car in front of them. Being fast by yourself in qualifying is one thing, but they want to run together in packs and pull up on the car in front of them. Part of it is drafting. Part of it's just trying to figure out your closing rate and how quickly you can make the pass and keep your momentum.
Gordon wins under caution, pases Earnhardt
Associated Press
TALLADEGA, Ala. (AP) - As beer cans bounced around his car, Jeff Gordon crossed the finish line Sunday for win No. 77 - breaking a tie with the late Dale Earnhardt on NASCAR's career victory list.
It was only fitting that it happened at Talladega Superspeedway, where Earnhardt - who would have been 56 on Sunday - won 10 times in his Cup career.
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But it was anticlimactic and confusing, ending under caution to leave Gordon unsure if he'd actually won and taken over sixth place on the wins list.
"Is it over?" he radioed his crew. "Is it over? Is it official?"
Nobody knew after two separate accidents on the first lap of a three-lap shootout to the finish froze the field and had NASCAR scrambling to make sense of the finish.
Gordon, who was 14th on a restart with 10 laps to go, stormed to the lead a second before NASCAR called a caution after David Reutimann's engine failed and dumped oil all over the track.
It set up a three-lap sprint to the finish, but NASCAR makes only one attempt to complete it. If caution comes out, the race instantly ends. So when Elliott Sadler bumped the back of Greg Biffle to trigger a wreck, the race was effectively over.
But Tony Stewart was knocked into the wall far ahead of that accident and went spinning down the track into the inside wall. He was fuming as the field passed by him under caution, angrily gesturing at Jamie McMurray.
The fans, meanwhile, figured out that Gordon, who tied Earnhardt last week in Phoenix, was the victor and reacted with the shower of beer cans.