Jeff Gordon No. 24 pushes teammate Mark Martin No. 5 as they draft together in practice at Talladega. (Photo: LAT Photographic)
If Sunday’s Aaron’s 499 follows the template established by Saturday afternoon’s Nationwide Series race at Talladega Superspeedway, the yellow might be worn off the caution flag.
Eleven caution flags interrupted the much shorter Aaron’s 312 Saturday, and most of them were caused by interaction in the two-car drafting that is expected to dominate Sunday’s race. The most significant of the crashes occurred on the last lap as contact between drafting partners Elliott Sadler and Mike Wallace punted Wallace’s car into the air. That effectively ended the race, and leader Kyle Busch was named the winner.
Drafting contact also led to a major crash with 28 laps to go.
Although the relatively new form of drafting breaks up the huge packs of cars that once were a staple at Talladega, it decidedly does not eliminate the possibility of huge accidents. In fact, the opposite was true in the Nationwide race.
Sunday’s race should be a bit calmer for two reasons – most of the drivers are more experienced, and the front-to-rear match between the Sprint Cup cars is better for the drafting style than the Nationwide model.
Still, frantic racing is likely to produce some mayhem.
The task of the eventual frontrunners will be to avoid it.
Those with the best shot at success early are the Hendrick Motorsports drivers – Jeff Gordon, Jimmie Johnson, Mark Martin and Dale Earnhardt Jr. Gordon won the pole Saturday, and his three teammates followed in the top four, placing them in an ideal drafting situation for the first part of the race.
“If we could write the script, we couldn’t have written it any better,” Gordon said. “It is going to be interesting how it alters our plan for the race because our plan coming in here was not to ride up front. So, we’ll kind of see how it plays out.
“Obviously, we would love to lead the [first] lap, and we’d love to lead the most laps, if that is possible. With this two-car draft, you don’t know how long you can stay up there.”
The two biggest problems Sunday are likely to be traffic as the two-car tandems switch positions and the overheating that will occur if they don’t.
“The biggest competition is ourselves – to make sure we survive and get to the finish,” Gordon said. “You have to watch for overheating. You’ve got to stay out of the wrecks. You have got to have kind of a flawless day to get yourself there.
“Even if you are there with five to go, [it] doesn't guarantee you are going to make it to the finish line because of all the madness and craziness that is going to go on the last few laps. Beyond that, it could come down to a restart and two guys get connected and take off and get a good restart. It could be anybody. Just two guys that work well together and are up front at the end.”
Mike Hembree is NASCAR Editor for SPEED.com and has been covering motorsports for 29 years. He is a six-time winner of the National Motorsports Press Association Writer of the Year Award.
