Talladega A House Of Champions, Wild Cards
The statistics suggest a number of variables when analyzing a race at Talladega.
First, Talladega is the house of champions. Seven NASCAR Sprint Cup Series championships have been won among the top-three drivers in pre-race Driver Rating.
Four-time series champion Jeff Gordon leads the pack with a 98.5 Driver Rating, followed by 2004 series champion Kurt Busch (95.0) and two-time champ Tony Stewart (93.1).
Additionally, two-time defending champion Jimmie Johnson ranks sixth in Driver Rating with an 89.8 and 2003 champion Matt Kenseth is eighth with an 88.9.
But there’s another angle that could possibly play out. And that’s the wild-card angle.
Among the top 10 in pre-race Driver Rating are three drivers who have yet to win a championship, and have earned a berth in only one Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup among them.
They are Jamie McMurray, Brian Vickers and Elliott Sadler.
Of the three, only Vickers has a Talladega win. But McMurray does have restrictor-plate success, winning at Daytona last July.
At Talladega, McMurray has a Driver Rating of 92.6 (fourth-best), an Average Running Position of 14.8 (seventh) and has run 63.9% of the Laps in the Top 15 (fourth).
Vickers nabbed his only win at Talladega in 2006, and finished in the top 10 in a total of three races at the famed track. He has a Driver Rating of 91.5 (fourth), an Average Running Position of 14.0 (fourth), and has run 67.2% of the Laps in the Top 15.
Sadler scored a sixth-place finish at Talladega in 2005, and finished in the top 20 in each of the last two spring races there. He has a Driver Rating of 81.4 (10th), an Average Running Position of 17.3 (11th), and has run 55.3% of the laps inside the top 15 (eighth).
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