NASCAR Sanity and Good Judgment Take the Day Off at Talladega

What… you expected sanity and good judgment would still be watching on the last lap at Talladega?

Silly you.

There’s no race track on this planet where sanity and good judgment look away more than at Talladega Superspeedway. And for now, forget that legend about the sacred Indian burial ground and the Trail of Tears and the “Talladega curse.”

They had nothing to do with the last half-mile of Sunday afternoon’s Geico 500. That’s when sanity and good judgment looked away as leader Michael McDowell and second-running Brad Keselowski made contact coming for the flag. McDowell’s spin triggered a melee that dramatically changed the rundown and gave replay editors the only 15 seconds they’d need for the nightly news.

As race winner Tyler Reddick said: “Man, it was nuts. It was chaos. When you come to Talladega that’s what you expect.”

Maybe the last 50 or so miles, but to be charitable about it, most of the 500-mile Cup Series race was boringly uneventful. To be sure… three-wide at 180-plus mph… but still boringly uneventful.

“Today was a different kind of race,” said Denny Hamlin, co-owner of the winning Toyota and himself a crash-related 37th DNF. “There wasn’t really much racing going on until that wreck happened with the Toyotas (of Hamlin, Bubba Wallace, and Erik Jones). From that point on, everyone was good on fuel and it was all-out.”

From the very start, though, teams were in a conservative, fuel-saving, let’s-just-ride-it-out mindset. Nobody seemed willing to pull out of line and actually race like drivers once did at Talladega. The dozens of early-race lead changes were among the handful of drivers at the front, barely edging each other at the scoring line while patiently running three-wide.

“We were saving so much fuel it looked three-wide and it looked borderline chaotic, but for the most part everyone was taking it easy, giving each other room,” Reddick said after his first victory this year and the sixth of his Cup career. “We were three-wide, and you saw drivers trying to advance their position in the draft to take advantage of the pit cycle. It was something to keep in mind all day long (since) everyone was kind of playing their own game.”

Much of it was manufacturer-related. It’s no secret that NASCAR in recent years has become as much about manufacturer-identity as driver- or team-identity. It’s acknowledged—understandable so, on some levels – that drivers are expected to help their brand mates. Up to a point, of course … as the last half-mile on Sunday proved.

“As a Toyota driver and as for other Toyota drivers, we’re committed to each other,” Reddick said. “Whatever the strategy may look like, whatever the plan is, we’re all on board with one another. It ended up working out for some of us, but that’s what we’re about. We’re about being on the same page and working together. We’re a family; we work together. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.”

It certainly didn’t work for Ford Performance. Its new Dark Horse Mustang was within seconds of its first-ever victory until McDowell and Keselowski banged together approaching the checkered. That opened the door for fourth-running Reddick—with pushing help from Toyota mates Martin Truex Jr. and Ty Gibbs—to slip through for Toyota’s fourth victory this year, two fewer than Chevrolet’s six.

“I’m heartbroken,” McDowell said afterward. “If I pull down a little bit sooner, we win the race. I moved up to block Brad’s (high-side) run and when I pulled back down (to counter Keselowski’s low-side run), I wasn’t clear. I hate it, but it’s the last lap at Talladega and you’re going for a win.”

Keselowski was happy with Ford’s teamwork (there’s that concept again) until those final seconds. “I was getting great pushes from (fellow Ford driver) Noah Gragson,” he said. “The Fords were working really well together. We cleared the Toyotas on the bottom lane (coming off Turn 4) and it was pretty clear it was going to come down to the three of us.”

Except that sanity and good judgment were looking away right about then. And as veteran Talladega-watchers know, certainly not for the first time.