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Nerves and focus Talladega not the place for NASCAR's faint of heart
Posted: Saturday April 24, 1999 05:45 PM
TALLADEGA, Ala. (AP) -- Jeff Burton concedes he gets edging at Talladega Speedway. "There aren't many races that I wake up on Sunday morning and I'm nervous," the Winston Cup points leader said as his Roush Racing team prepared his Ford for the DieHard 500. "I don't mind telling you that Sunday morning at Talladega I wake up and I'm nervous. I'm not real smart, so I don't get nervous very often, but this place makes me nervous." Even without cars on it, the wide expanse of asphalt, whitened by time and wear, looms menacing at the sprawling track 40 miles east of Birmingham. The track is 2.66 miles in length, the longest and fastest oval in NASCAR racing. And, with the rules requiring carburetor restrictor plates to keep the cars under 200 mph, once the 43 cars in the starting field take the green flag, they run in tight packs that are an ideal breeding ground for huge crashes. That is what makes Burton and his competitors nervous, and very focused, heading into a 500-mile race at Talladega. "You can't hide from a wreck here," Burton said. "You go to Michigan or Rockingham or Charlotte and, if your car doesn't drive well, you just slow down. You can't do that here, so it's wait for the wreck and hope you miss it. "Then, if you miss it, you tell everyone how good of a job you did. If you get in it, you tell them you couldn't have avoided it. But you can't let down your guard for a second." Actually, Burton, who will start third on Sunday, has been in only one crash here in his nine previous starts, and that was in the spring of 1994 in his first run at Talladega. Still, he has seen plenty of big wrecks from the driver's seat, and his only top 10 finishes have been a seventh and an eighth. Ken Schrader, who got his first Winston Cup win here in 1994, will start from the pole after qualifying at 197.765 mph, the fastest lap here since Bill Elliott's 199.388 in 1990. In fact, the top four qualifiers were over 197. Bobby Labonte, last year's winner from the pole and the runner-up to Dale Jarrett in the fall race, will be on the outside of the front row, followed by Burton and Joe Nemechek. Schrader said he doesn't get uptight coming to Talladega. In fact, he enjoys the speed. But Schrader is also very aware of the lurking danger in those long lines of speeding traffic. "The objective of our sport is to go real fast and get there first," he said. "I always try to do that. Everybody tries to do that and you wind up running close together because all the cars are about the same speed because the rule book is real thick. "So, no one has a real distinct advantage. When everyone runs that fast and that close, sooner or later someone is bumping someone else just a little bit. Then it gets messy." Labonte, who is one of the favorites on Sunday, said, "We've run well at Talladega the last five or six races. We just had a good car and were able to stay out of any incidents that might happen. If we stay out of everybody's way or stay out of trouble come Sunday, hopefully, we can be in contention to do what we did last year." Asked if starting up front is the best way to stay out of trouble here, Labonte shrugged and said, "I've started in the back and it's no fun anywhere. Starting in the front is a little better, I think. It's a mental thing. When your day is over, you're drained more mentally than physically." The winners at Talladega generally come from the front half of the field and that group on Sunday includes former winners Jeff Gordon, the two-time defending Winston Cup champion, Dale Earnhardt, Elliott and Jarrett.
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