Tony Stewart loves visiting Talladega, Ala., a part of the country that fits him as comfortably as an old shoe. He might go fishing on one of the area's many lakes with Red Farmer, a founding member of NASCAR's Alabama Gang. He might venture over to the local short track to see some friends compete. And then Sunday afternoon he'll race at big, bad Talladega Superspeedway, where so much will be beyond his control.

"It's the one place that is very nerve-wracking in the Chase, because you realize a lot of your success on that individual day is going to be dictated more from the people behind you than what you're actually doing yourself," said Stewart, a winner on the 2.66-mile track in 2008. "That's the part that makes it difficult with it being a Chase race. You're trying to go out and have an individual accomplishment for a season-ending championship, and it can be dictated a lot by what the guys behind you are doing. That's what makes it a little bit more difficult."

That can make it a lot more difficult, as Jimmie Johnson discovered in 2006, when Brian Vickers turned the No. 48 and buried his former teammate in an even deeper hole that Johnson somehow managed to crawl out of. We've been fortunate, really, that in the short history of the Chase we haven't had a championship bid ruined outright by whim of Talladega misfortune, a title run scuttled by the Big One. But the possibility is there every fall, particularly now that Talladega has been shifted to a later schedule spot that magnifies its potential impact, particularly given that the circuit heads to north Alabama with the top two drivers separated by the narrowest margin ever at this point.

Everything that makes this race appealing from a fan perspective -- its almost arbitrary nature, its potential for destruction, the fact that even the best drivers are seen pushed around or dragged along through no control of their own -- makes Talladega downright dangerous from a championship perspective. Forget the trite, misused term of "wild card," which anyone who plays cards knows is usually a good thing for the holder. For Johnson and Denny Hamlin, divided by a mere six points, there's nothing good about Talladega. With only three races remaining in the season after Sunday, the goal is simply to avoid a bad beat.

"There is no safe place," Johnson said. "We see a lot of teams trying to be conservative and smart and get to the end of the race and go from there, and the problem we have now is when everybody decides with 20 to go that it's time to race, you have to race. You need the best finish you can get, and that's where the crashes are. ... At the end you've got to pull [the belts] tight and drive through there and try to get the best finish you can."

And yet, there's no question fans love the place. The sight of cars flipping end-over-end, a too-regular occurrence on a track that's been untamable since the day it opened, has done little to dampen spectator enthusiasm for what's become NASCAR's high temple of speed. A trip to Talladega, complete with the smell of wood smoke hanging over the campgrounds, the spirit of Halloween running amok through the infield, and so much on the line for the championship contenders, carries with it a buzz that few events on the NASCAR calendar can match. At most places this time of year, there's a hint of autumn in the air. At Talladega, it's the unmistakable scent of mayhem.

There are instances, such as when the cars barrel four-wide toward an unpredictable finish, when the fervor so many fans feel toward Talladega seems easy to understand. And yet there are others when it seems downright incongruous, starkly at odds with what so many race fans seem to want out of their sport. For years now, we've heard a loud, traditional segment of the fan base deride the current championship format as random and gimmicky. And yet, many of those same people go bananas over a race that's so random and gimmicky, it makes the Chase look staid and systematic by comparison.

At least in the Chase, drivers and race teams are in control of their fate. But that hasn't stopped some from propagating the uneducated theory that Johnson is somehow a product of the system, that he hasn't really earned anything, that he's lucked into his four crowns. Funny, you never hear anyone complain that Dale Earnhardt really should have been credited with just 66 career victories, because his 10 wins at Talladega came by random chance. No one dares suggest that his final victory, recorded at Talladega 10 years ago this fall, was an arbitrary quirk of fortune rather than an epic come-from-behind charge. No one intimates that Dale Earnhardt Jr. didn't earn his five victories at Talladega, or that Kevin Harvick and Jamie McMurray were the beneficiaries of blind chance.

And yet, there's nothing in NASCAR more capricious than an event at Talladega, where strategy is only a suggestion, where a column of moving air or a bobble by someone else in the corner can sweep a driver to a fate not of his own making. And people claim the Chase is arbitrary? The Chase is 10 weeks that are plotted down to the most minute detail. The Chase is a two-and-a-half month period that teams plan for all season. The Chase is chess. Talladega is double-zero roulette, except that when the wheel is set in motion, all the players hope their number doesn't come up.

"Talladega, I don't think, has a whole lot to do with skills," said Jeff Gordon, a six-time winner at the track, "so I would say luck will play out a lot more."

Carl Edwards, who went airborne into the catchfence in the spring of last year, went a step further. The place is so inherently indiscriminate, he argued, that the track's Chase race ought to be an exhibition. "Points should not be awarded at Talladega," he said. "In a fair competition, they shouldn't be, because it's so random. It's just a treacherous race."

But of course, drivers have been echoing similar sentiments for decades, and nobody ever bothers to listen. Just shut up and drive, right? Talladega, such a feast for the motorsports senses, is simply too much fun to give up, even if vehicles risk getting wadded up like tin cans, even if delicate title hopes dangle like silk strands in the wind. It will all be on display Sunday, when unseen aerodynamic forces will jumble cars as if in a bingo hopper, and a winner will be spat out. The top Chase contenders will be right in the middle of it, hoping their carefully-constructed championship campaigns aren't undone by a 500-mile game of chance.

The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer.