 | | The view coming out of Turn 2 from a car driven by Dale Earnhardt Jr. on Thursday at Talladega. Credit: AP |
By David Newton, NASCAR.COM
October 4, 2006
04:52 PM EDT (20:52 GMT)
Dale Earnhardt Jr. hopes to get around the newly paved Talladega Superspeedway in his Nextel Cup car better than he did in the street version. He brushed the wall so hard with his Chevrolet Monte Carlos SS last week that he knocked off the side-view mirror.  |  | | Dale Earnhardt Jr. shows the damage done to his Monte Carlo when he brushed the wall at Talladega last Thursday. Credit: Autostock |
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| Inside the Numbers |
| The active Cup drivers who have won at Talladega Superspeedway |
| Driver |
Wins |
| Dale Earnhardt Jr. |
5 |
| Jeff Gordon |
4 |
| Bill Elliott |
2 |
| Dale Jarrett |
2 |
| Terry Labonte |
2 |
| Sterling Marlin |
2 |
| Mark Martin |
2 |
| Jimmie Johnson |
1 |
| Bobby Labonte |
1 |
| Ken Schrader |
1 |
| Michael Waltrip |
1 |
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"I was driving the car around the high groove and all of a sudden the wall jumped out and slapped the side of the car,'' Earnhardt said as he looked ahead to Sunday's race. "The [SAFER barrier] was real uneven. It wasn't aligned with the track all the way around, so it kind of jumped out and grabbed me. "It was pretty funny. I was dragging the mirror all the way around just to let them know how close we were.'' It won't be funny if Earnhardt or any of the 10 drivers competing for the championship hit the wall this weekend in what is deemed the biggest "wild card'' of the Chase. It's even more of a wild card with the new surface, a project that began after Jimmie Johnson won the May race and was completed on Sept. 19. Initial response from the six teams that tested on the 2.66-mile surface was positive. All agreed the baby smooth blacktop is easier to get around than the worn bumpy surface that was tough on tires. "I drove around with my right arm and never touched the steering wheel with my left arm, so it is definitely easy to drive,'' said Ryan Newman, who tested for Penske Racing South. "But it is going to get a lot more difficult when other cars are out there.'' Newman said it's also going to be interesting to see how the track reacts in different weather. "If it gets hot, it can get greasy and slick,'' he said. But the biggest concern is how the cars respond in large packs of traffic that are common at the restrictor-plate track. Johnson, eighth in points, said drivers may not get a true indication until Sunday. "You might get 15 to 18 cars in a draft [during practice], but you never get the whole group together to see what's going on,'' he said. "That's the toughest thing.'' Jeff Gordon, who has won four times at Talladega and 10 on superspeedways, doesn't think racing will change at all. "It will still be wild,'' said Gordon, who fell four spots to sixth in points after a faulty fuel pump left him 39th last week at Kansas. "In the past, we've been able to run from the white line to the wall. I think you're going to continue to see that. |  | WHAT THEY DID | The project at Talladega included complete asphalt repaving of the 2.66-mile tri-oval track, apron and pit road.
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"If guys are being more aggressive trying to get up front, and I think it's getting too crazy, I may try to get out of that situation and just bide my time. We need to be there at the end of the race to have a chance to win.'' Mark Martin isn't optimistic that the new surface will change his fortunes on a track where he's finished 33rd or worse in the last three races. "I'm gonna wreck anyway,'' he said with a laugh. Martin, who is third in points, also doesn't believe the surface will cut down on the number of overall wrecks. "It should make more wrecks, I would think,'' he said. "We'll run into each other more ... cut each other off. You can't see five-wide. A guy three-wide can mess up a guy fifth-wide and not even know it. It is what it is. It's Talladega.'' Dale Jarrett, who won this event a year ago, doesn't paint such a bleak picture. "You don't have all those patches that we've been fighting for years and all of the dips and things in the track that made it difficult at times and helped create some of the accidents that we would have because that would get us into each other,'' he said. "It has the prospects of being maybe the closest finish we've ever seen there, and we've had some pretty close ones." Because the tire Goodyear tested was so durable, as it was on the new surface at Charlotte earlier this year, Martin Truex Jr. said teams may take more chances on two- and no-tire stops. Otherwise, he doesn't expect racing to be different. "We still have to fill a 13-gallon [fuel] cell up, and the racing should be as good as it has ever been, if not better,'' said Truex, who tested for Dale Earnhardt Inc. Earnhardt, who won four in a row and five of seven at Talladega from 2001-2004, said progressive banking in the tri-oval that wasn't there before the repaving could present problems. "That might be a little tricky as we go through there side by side, moving around, pulling the air off each other's cars and stuff,'' said Earnhardt, who is seventh in points. "Hopefully, nobody has any issues and gets loose there.'' But Earnhardt's biggest issue remains the soft walls. "It isn't perfectly symmetrical in the corner,'' he said. "It sort of waves and changes lanes on you, if you will. I drove that SS Monte Carlo around there, held it in a perfectly straight line around the corner. I think the right rear quarter panel hit the wall two or three times.'' | 
