NASCAR preview: Amp Energy 500
Just four races left in NASCAR’s Chase for the Championship as the Sprint Cup Series returns to Talladega for the second time this season for Sunday’s Amp Energy 500 – bet on it at WagerWeb.com.
Talladega Superspeedway is one of the two restrictor plate tracks on the Sprint Cup schedule, Daytona being the other. How effectively the drivers draft off other cars to create downforce for their own cars is the key to winning on the fast and wide track. That and avoiding the “big one.”
This is not a great track for Mark Martin, who is second in the points to Jimmy Johnson, 118 behind. Frankly, Martin almost has to win Sunday to have any shot of catching JJ. Martin does have two career wins at Talladega and has finished in the top 10 in more than half of his 43 starts. But he also has six DNFs and has been caught up in big wrecks: In the spring, he was caught up in a wreck minutes into the race.
In four of the five Chase races all-time at Talladega, the eventual Cup Series champion posted a top-10 finish. Johnson, in 2006, was the only driver to finish outside the top 10 in the Talladega race to go on to win the title. Johnson cruised to a second-place finish last week at Martinsville and has all but locked up his fourth straight championship. But this track is where big wrecks happen, and Johnson has six DNFs here himself. He has only four top-five finishes in 15 starts at the track.
Look out for Jeff Gordon this week. He has finished in the top five in the past four Cup races, the longest streak in the series. Gordon also has five consecutive top-10s and eight consecutive top-15s. Gordon has six career victories at Talladega and a seventh could put him back in contention for the series championship.
Kurt Busch’s average finish at Talladega in the last five starts is 15.2. Just one DNF in his last 10 Talladega races is another strong statistic. He has taken home eight top-10 finishes in the last 10 Talladega races.
Denny Hamlin, who won last week at Martinsville, ranks first in restrictor plate driver rating this season, averaging a 110.8 in the two Daytona races and the first Talladega race. If Hamlin wins this Sunday, he’ll win consecutive NASCAR Sprint Cup races for the first time in his career. He is the WagerWeb.com favorite this week.
Oklahoma State, which beat a ranked Georgia team in the season opener, has not knocked off two ranked teams in the same season since 1984.
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