Talladega Superspeedway has a reputation as one of the wildest tracks on the NASCAR circuit.
Is it hype? Or do the numbers prove the point?
The biggest
Talladega is the longest oval track in the NASCAR circuit. At 2.66 miles (14,045 feet), one Talladega lap is the length of about 468 football fields. Talladega is longer than Mauna Kea is tall.
If we measure lengths in terms of Talladega:
- The distance from Charlotte to Nashville (the location of the NASCAR awards ceremony) is 339 Talladegas.
- If you flew direct from Los Angeles to New York City, you would cover 2500 Talladegas.
- Martinsville is just 0.20 Talladegas.
Talladega also holds the record for banking in current Cup Series tracks with 33 degrees. Talladega’s banking is so high that the outside lane of the 48-foot wide racing surface is 26.1 feet higher than the inside lane. That difference is about the height of a two-story house.
Talladega is a tri-oval. Think of it as three straight lines connected by three curves.
While tri-oval describes the track shape, it is also used to refer to the frontstretch — the most triangular part of the track.
And Talladega’s frontstretch is formidable. The 4,300-foot segment is banked at 16.5 degrees. Talladega’s frontstretch has more banking than all three of Pocono’s turns.
The backstretch, known as the Alabama Gang Superstretch, isn’t too shabby, either. It’s 1,000 feet longer than Daytona’s backstretch. If you were to unroll Richmond, its entire 0.75-mile length would just cover Talladega’s backstretch.
Talladega’s infield is so large that it could hold the L.A. Coliseum, Martinsville, Bristol, Dover, Richmond and the NASCAR Hall of Fame.
The Fastest
Bill France Sr. originally envisioned Talladega as Indianapolis Motor Speedway with higher banking. At a time when raw speed was the big attraction, higher banking would allow Talladega to wrest away the closed-track speed record from Indy.
In 1970, just six months after Talladega hosted its first race, Buddy Baker became the first driver to break the 200 mph mark on a closed course.
Baker’s breakthrough happened at a testing session. It wasn’t until 1982 that Benny Parsons became the first Cup Series driver to qualify over 200 mph. Just four years later, all but one of the 42 drivers starting the spring race qualified over 200 mph.
In May 1987, Bill Elliott set the all-time Cup Series qualifying record at 212.809 mph. That record will likely never be broken. During the race, Bobby Allison got airborne and crashed into the catchfence. NASCAR subsequently mandated restrictor plates (and now tapered spacers) to keep speeds down and cars on the ground.
Restricting airflow to the engine makes drafting even more important. That, in turn, leads to large packs of cars racing within inches of each other. That’s why four of the top-10 closest finishes in the Cup Series happened at Talladega.
In the spring 2011 race, Jimmie Johnson beat Clint Bowyer by just two-thousandths (0.002) of a second. That ties the famous 2003 Ricky Craven/Kurt Busch Darlington finish for the smallest margin of victory in Cup Series history.
Of all Talladega races run after NASCAR introduced electronic scoring in May 1993, 44 ended under a green flag. Of those races:
- Seven (15.9%) were won by less than 25 thousandths of a second.
- Fifteen (34.1%) were won by less than one-tenth of a second.
- Thirty-nine (88.6%) were won by less than two-tenths of a second.
- The largest margin of victory was 0.388 seconds.
The Fiercest
Pack racing leads to more contact. Out of 35 Talladega races run under the current green-white-checkered rule, 14 (40%) ended under caution. Rain caused one of those yellow/checkered finishes. The rest were due to accidents.
In 64 races since 1990, Talladega has seen 228 caution-causing spins or accidents, which involved 1,120 cars.
Almost half (49.2%) of these incidents involved only one or two cars. A one- or two-car accident is no less problematic for the drivers involved than a larger crash. But the more cars involved in accidents, the more likely a driver is to be knocked out of the race.
- 3.5% of all accidents since 1990 involved 20 or more cars.
- 5.7% of accidents collected 15 or more cars.
- 16.7% were 10-car or larger crashes.
- 38.2% involved five or more cars.
While probable, the Big One is by no means inevitable.
Neither are accidents in general. Three races since 1990 finished with no cautions, but all three of these races took place before 2003. The lowest number of cautions in a Talladega race since 2003 is three. That happened at the fall races in 2013 and 2015.
The average number of caution-causing accidents and spins in a Talladega race is 3.5.
- Seven races (10.9%) had a single caution-causing accident or spin.
- 14 out of 64 races (21.9%) had four caution-causing accidents or spins
- 13 of 64 races (20.3%) had three caution-causing incidents.
Races with four or fewer accidents make up 71.9% of all Talladega races — which means that races with five or more accidents only account for 28.1%.
The numbers definitely uphold Talladega’s reputation. Although the track itself remains the same, the racing varies. Tune in to NBC (2 p.m. ET) to see whether this fall’s bout is accident-filled or accident-free.