Anything can happen when cars get this close together. Credit: Jonathan Ferrey/Getty Images

Fantasy Preview: Talladega

The four superspeedway races, along with both Bristol events and the two road races, are widely considered wild-card races during which anything can happen.

No matter what NASCAR does to try and break the cars into smaller packs, they will be in a draft of dozens for much of the race. With so many cars so close together, disaster lurks throughout the event.

	Inside the Numbers Dale Earnhardt Jr. at Talladega Category Stat Starts 10 Wins 5 Top-5s 7 Top-10s 8 Average start 11.5 Average finish 7.3

In the past three years, the biggest crash of the day has damaged an average of 11 cars. The biggest crash on the restrictor-plate superspeedways in the last three years came in this race in 2003 when nearly two-thirds of the field (27 cars) piled into one another in a Lap 5 disaster when Ryan Newman cut a tire running near the head of the field.

Still, one driver will take the checkered flag.

The favorites

If you are getting tired of seeing Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s name in predictions when the field rolls onto the restrictor-plate superspeedways, you'll have to grit your teeth for at least one more race.

As long as he is winning, he has earned to be the favorite at Talladega.

The No. 8 Chevrolet blew an engine in Earnhardt's first Talladega duel in his rookie year, but he has finished every lap of competition since, which is no small feat considering that the Big One is constantly waiting to claim drivers through the field.

In fact, Earnhardt has not been immune to the Big One; he has just been able to overcome it. In both 2003 races, Earnhardt was clipped during the commotion of the big crash but had a car that was still capable of leading laps and contending for victory. Other than his one bad race in the inaugural attempt, Earnhardt has finished in the top 15 every time he has set a wheel on Talladega's surface.

Since his win in fall 2001, Junior has never finished worse than second on this track.

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If that were not impressive enough, both of his second-place finishes could easily have been victories under slightly different circumstances. In the fall 2003 race, Earnhardt did not press the issue during the closing laps because his teammate Michael Waltrip was in the lead and he was content to insure Dale Earnhardt Inc. (DEI) claimed the trophy.

In his other runner-up finish he was in the process of leading a large contingent of drafting partners past Jeff Gordon when the final caution flag came out and froze the field with his Chevy bumper a nose shy of victory. That race was one of the catalysts for the green/white/checkered rule that NASCAR uses today.

One way to stay out of trouble is to stay up front. Dale Earnhardt Jr. has a way to go to catch his father both in terms of victories (Jr. has five -- Sr. had 10) and in terms of total laps led. However, in his relatively short career, Junior has climbed to eighth on the all-time lap leader board with 489 (his father had 1,377).

To climb one more spot, Earnhardt has to lead more laps than the other favorite for the weekend: Jeff Gordon has kept ahead of trouble for 501 circuits around this track. While the Big One can erupt anywhere in the field, it rarely engulfs the leader.

Gordon owes his favored status this weekend to a record of three victories in the last four superspeedway races. He is one of a few drivers who refuse to be manipulated by the DEI mystique and he will pull out and attempt a pass whenever he thinks he has the momentum to complete it, regardless of whether there is a pair of DEI-mates in front of him.

Often this puts him in the eye of the storm and he has finished outside the top-10 twice in the past eight superspeedway races, but with risk there is reward and his other six results have all been inside that mark.

Dark horses

It is easy to think of Talladega in terms of pairs, and Michael Waltrip and Jimmie Johnson could just as easily be considered favorites along with Earnhardt and Gordon if not for the fact that they have been buffeted about at Talladega.

	Credit: Jamie Squire/Getty Images
	Inside the Numbers Michael Waltrip at Talladega Category Stat Starts 38 Wins 1 Top-5s 6 Top-10s 12 Average start 18.7 Average finish 19.1

Waltrip has always been much stronger at Daytona than he is at Talladega. Even though he has led laps in the past nine consecutive races on the big track in Alabama, misfortune here has accounted for four finishes outside the top-20 in the last eight attempts.

With the crew and equipment change at the beginning of the year, he will pilot the machines and inherit the setup notes that accounted for five victories in the last three and half years with Earnhardt at the wheel, and along with his own victory here in 2003, Waltrip could be even more impressive than his teammate. He has a 25th-place finish at Daytona this spring, however, which causes just enough doubt to strip him of the title "sure-thing."

Most of Johnson's misfortune at Talladega has come at the hands of DEI. In the 2002 fall race, he sat on the pole and was passing for the lead over Waltrip when Earnhardt (running a lap down at the time and drafting his teammate) bump-drafted the No. 15 entering Turn 1.

He bumped it right into the side of Johnson, who took a long, backward slide through the infield grass and swept back up onto track through a pack of onrushing contenders, without hitting anything (or anyone).

The backward torque on his engine, however, was enough to cause it to blow later in the race and he retired in 37th, in sight of the checkers, only 15 laps from the finish line. Earnhardt was awarded the free pass during the caution he inspired and went on to win the race.

It seems that these tales are told too often of Johnson at Talladega to make him a certainty, but he has a good enough record at Daytona to enter the weekend with four top-fives in his last five superspeedway attempts, including a runner-up to teammate Gordon in last year's Pepsi 400 at Daytona.

To succeed, the remainder of the field needs to take a page from DEI's playbook. What has made them so successful in recent years is how well they draft together. If one dominant car is hard to pass, two is virtually impossible.

Kevin Harvick is riding a four-race strak of top-10s at Talladega. Credit: Autostock

For this reason, one team to watch is Richard Childress Racing (RCR). With Jeff Burton in the stable this year, they have a much more mature organization. Even when the legendary Dale Earnhardt twisted the wheel, he was reluctant to work with teammate Mike Skinner, but Burton has always been the company man who will help Kevin Harvick and Dave Blaney whenever the opportunity arises.

For Burton, the ability to work as a team on the restrictor-plate superspeedways is a welcome change from his days at Roush Racing. While that organization has great engines, they are also temperamental, and Burton drew the short straw from the engine department twice in the last two years and blew his powerplant on the big tracks.

Another blown engine for his former team took Edwards out of this race last year while Matt Kenseth and Mark Martin account for another four expired power plants in that same span of time on the restrictor-plate superspeedways. If you do not have a calculator handy, that adds up to seven blown engines in 12 races.

With or without help, Harvick can find his way to the head of the field at Talladega: In the last two years he has a pair of runner-ups, a third, and a seventh to account for a four-race streak of top-10s. Blaney has been less successful, but he has also campaigned less-powerful equipment in the past few years. In 2004 he took Bill Davis' lightly funded second team to a 15th in the Daytona 500 and repeated that feat in Richard Childress' car in the 400. In this year's edition of the 500, he did one better by finishing 14th.

Avoidance principle

Luck is hard to predict. The upside of that is that when a driver stays out of trouble he is capable of running extremely well on the restrictor-plate tracks. Prior to a dramatic and inspirational top-10 at Bristol, Kyle Petty's most recent top-10 came at Talladega in 2002.

Rusty Wallace endured a rough ride last season at Talladega. Credit: Autostock

Elliott Sadler with a third in 2003, Jeff Green with a fifth in 2002, and Jeremy Mayfield with a fifth in 1998 earned top-fives for their only career top-10 finish at Talladega and they have not revisited the front of the field. Mayfield's fifth-place finish more than five years ago is too distant a memory to help boost his confidence.

Anything can, and often will, happen on the big tracks, which makes waving a red flag over any single driver an incredibly difficult feat.

Kevin Lepage hammered that fact home as recently as this year at Daytona with his ninth-place finish, which has since been followed by a failure to qualify in exactly every other race.

This leaves one attempting to predict future luck by past fortune; the drivers who have been swept into Big Ones most often in the last three years deserve to be left in the garage in favor of some wildly improbably dark horses.

The drivers with the most bummers are: Kasey Kahne and Scott Riggs (three accidents in five starts), Jeremy Mayfield and Ryan Newman (5 out of 12) and Mike Wallace and Jamie McMurray (4 out of 10).

In addition Robby Gordon, Matt Kenseth, Ricky Rudd, and Rusty Wallace have each crashed in at least a third of their attempts in the past 12 races on the Superspeedways.

Dan Beaver's fantasy analysis appears weekly on the afternoon prior to Nextel Cup qualifying. The opinions expressed here are solely those of the writer.