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NASCAR Sprint-Cup Series
HEMBREE: Two-By-Two A Hard Sell
While the two-by-two tandem drafting does have its attractions, fans generally detest it...
Mike Hembree  |  Posted October 21, 2011   Talladega, AL
There are so many things about Talladega that never change.

Firewood, for one. Talladega, Ala., might be the firewood capital of the world. Drive into the speedway from any direction this week, and you are hammered by the incredible availability of firewood along the roadsides. Stacks and stacks of the stuff. If you think the apocalypse is coming by year’s end and you need the essentials, this is the place.

And beads. Second – perhaps – only to New Orleans during Mardi Gras, Talladega is Bead City. The economy might be down in other sectors, but in the bead sector, all of the charts point up this week in eastern Alabama. This is perhaps the only place in the world where you can pull over to the side of the road and get drive-in bead service at the same place when you stock up on firewood.

The two go together because people – primarily males – who are camping out at or near Talladega Superspeedway this week will need firewood because the nights are chilly, and they’ll need beads because the occasional female will pass by and kinda sorta offer to briefly expose parts of her anatomy in exchange for a necklace or two.

It’s been called the barter garter system.

Another Talladega thing you can count on – even in times when ticket sales are down (and they’ll likely be down here again this week), pick a vantage point near the track and you can look out over a sea of recreational vehicles, campers, tents, pickup trucks with odd sleeping arrangements and converted school buses painted in every color of the rainbow as long as those colors are Earnhardt black and Junior green.

Even in tough times, people still come to Talladega because it’s Talladega. It’s a good time, a carnival, a happening.

But they come with tempered expectations.

The huge drafting packs that once entertained fans at one of the world’s fastest race tracks have been relegated to history – never to return, garage residents say. Those 35-car masses of metal and horsepower were attractions in themselves, huge accidents waiting to happen, playgrounds of fire and fury. To sit in the grandstands and watch those packs roar by was one of the unique attractions of stock car racing.

Now Talladega is still about 35-car drafts – except that 33 of those cars are absent. The tandem drafting that has ruled the circuit’s biggest tracks in recent times remains the best way to move around Talladega’s 2.66 miles, and, despite marginal rules changes by NASCAR, it seems that Sunday’s race here again will feature that sort of activity.
Two-car drafts were the order of the day once again this past weekend at Talladega. (Photo: LAT Photographic)

As NASCAR vice president Robin Pemberton admitted Thursday, it’s a hard sell. The tandem drafting does have its attractions, but fans generally detest it, and fans vote with their feet. They like the way it ended here in April, with eight cars sweeping under the checkered flag in a group so tight you would have thought they were country cousins, but the way it ended wasn’t representative of the rest of the day.

The rest of the day was mostly about waiting – waiting for swaps in the tandem drafts, waiting for someone’s engine to explode because of spiking water temperatures, waiting for that exciting round of green-flag pit stops.

It’s odd racing.

Two by two by two by two, it rolls on, here at the capital of firewood and beads.

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.
The opinions reflected herein are solely those of the above commentator and are not necessarily those of SPEED.com, FOX, NewsCorp, or SPEED
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