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The Top Five: Breaking down the Talladega spring race

Five thoughts after Sunday’s race at Talladega Superspeedway…

1. Super superspeedway racing

NASCAR designed the new rules package to improve the racing on intermediate tracks, with the other circuits — short tracks, superspeedways and road courses — catching shrapnel from the impact.

Superspeedways weren’t an afterthought, but it wasn’t necessarily designed with Talladega in mind. But it sure as hell worked here.

Talladega was an excellent race, harkening back to some of the 2000s-style restrictor-plate racing (way before the tandems and before the block-and-defend racing of recent seasons). This was a race where drivers could move from the back to the front — after penalties, for example — and just as quickly move from front to back if they got caught in the middle.

If anything, the leader in the final laps was going to be at a disadvantage. Had the race gone green before the late wreck that caused a red flag, Joey Logano probably would have lost anyway; the second-place driver could have laid back to get a run on Logano, and he likely wouldn’t have been able to stop it.

That’s a big-time departure from recent years, where the leader just controlled the lines and stalled out the momentum from whichever lane had energy.

This form of plate racing — er, tapered spacer racing — was much more entertaining and exciting. And yet it also didn’t seem to be too extreme on the danger side — which was a real worry before the race, given the major runs the drivers said they were getting.

When a superspeedway produces a spectacle like on Sunday — thrilling, unpredictable racing without anyone getting injured — it becomes a can’t-miss event. For those who tuned in or came to central Alabama on a beautiful weekend, it was worth the time investment.

That hasn’t always been the case, including last fall. So this was a welcome and refreshing day.

2. Cheering Chase

The fans really, REALLY enjoyed seeing good Southern boy Chase Elliott win in Talladega. Dawsonville, Ga. is closer to Atlanta, of course — but ‘Dega is still only two and a half hours away from the Elliott Kingdom. And he felt the love.

Elliott soaked up the cheers after the race, calling it “one of the coolest moments of my racing career.”

“It was awesome,” he said. “Just the postrace was unbelievable. I’ve never had a crowd that just felt like (it was) in the palm of your hands. You get excited, they get excited. You walk, they don’t say anything. You pump your arms up, they get pumped up. That’s just something that I’ve never really experienced.”

Elliott won three times last year, so you would think the crowd at Watkins Glen or Dover or Kansas would have reacted similarly. But while those races had plenty of cheers, Sunday’s were especially enthusiastic.

“You don’t know if that will always be that way,” Elliott said. “People might not like you in a couple years. Today is something I’ll never forget.”

So what kind of impact does an Elliott win have? In the NASCAR community, it’s a jolt of electricity. He excites the fan base — especially the traditional fans — and generates a lot of good vibes. Beyond that, I don’t think an Elliott win crosses over into the mainstream sports scene like a Dale Earnhardt Jr. or Jeff Gordon win did.

But if he keeps winning, he’s got a decent chance to make that happen eventually.

3. Chevy power

Imagine being Chevrolet at the Daytona 500 and the winning driver — in a Toyota! — goes to victory lane in part because your marquee team helped him during the race.

Uh…

Clearly, Chevy was alllllll about making sure that didn’t happen again. No more Hendrick Motorsports/Joe Gibbs Racing secret alliance. No more questions about loyalty.

Chevy wanted its teams to work together — to the point where the manufacturer had meetings with all of its organizations during the weekend — and emphasized guidelines for doing so.

Race together on the track. Pit together. Don’t help another competitor. And above all else, make sure a Chevy wins.

“Fortunately, everybody did that and it worked out really well,” Elliott crew chief Alan Gustafson said. “We needed to win this. We needed to consolidate our efforts. We needed to break the streak that one of our rivals has here.”

Not only that, but Chevy needed to win a race — period. JGR’s Toyotas and Team Penske’s Fords had won all nine Cup races this season. And had Logano won, that streak would have been 10 and counting.

Chevy has been beaten up this year by critics, and rightfully so. The manufacturer as a whole hasn’t been up to par compared to Toyota and Ford, and it seems to extend across its various teams. They’re behind.

So this was a big day, even if it was on a superspeedway.

“I’m really proud of all the Chevrolet drivers, crew chiefs, engineers, spotters, competition directors and team owners on how they worked together to get the best results today,” Chevrolet’s Jim Campbell said. “It was great to see Camaro ZL1 drivers in the top three spots and six in the top 10.”

4. Flipping out

Kyle Larson — one of the planet’s unluckiest race car drivers so far in 2019 — went for an unexpectedly crazy ride on the last lap Sunday.

I say “unexpectedly” because all he did was get doored by a spinning William Byron, which sent Larson sliding on the backstretch pavement. You wouldn’t have thought it would be anything more than that based on the start.

But suddenly the slide turned into a flip. His car went airborne, and he hit the interior wall — luckily, since clearing it could have been disastrous for onlookers — and sent Larson flipping and barrel-rolling for what seemed like forever.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve flipped like that in anything,” Larson said afterward. “I just didn’t know if it was ever going to stop and where I was at in reference to the fence or anything. It was scary, but thankfully it came to a stop tires-down.”

It was unsettling to see the car turn over by itself, and Larson said NASCAR would likely look into it. But after looking at the replay, perhaps damage caused by the Byron hit played into the incident by allowing air to get underneath the car.

Actually, let’s hope that is the explanation. Otherwise, NASCAR may have to get to work on figuring out how a car could do that on its own.

5. Why the caution?

Let’s try to clear up some of the confusion caused by the timing of the race-ending yellow flag.

When the caution originally came out, it seemed obvious NASCAR was reacting to the multi-car crash triggered by contact between David Ragan and William Byron, which ended with Kyle Larson flipping.

Not so, per a NASCAR spokesman.

Right before the caution came out, NASCAR said officials spotted a large chunk of metal debris from Ricky Stenhouse Jr.’s crash (later cited in Steve O’Donnell’s tweet) that was going to force them to throw a yellow flag. Officials didn’t feel it would have been safe to have the cars race back to the frontstretch with the debris there and possibly shoot it into the crowd if someone ran it over.

But just as officials were calling for the caution due to the debris, the backstretch incident happened and made it a moot point anyway.

The official race report listed the reason for the caution as the backstretch incident, but that’s not necessarily the case. Apparently, per NASCAR, the accident and the decision to throw the caution for Stenhouse happened at the same time.

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The Top Five: Breaking down the Talladega playoff race

Five thoughts after Sunday’s playoff race at Talladega Superspeedway…

1. Actually, it wasn’t a bad race

Talladega was a restrictor-plate demolition derby unlike anything we’d seen in a long time.

— Only 14 cars were still running at the finish — 14! — and only eight of those were still held together enough to actually race for the win.

— The 11 cautions tied a race record! Yep, none of the 96 other races run at Talladega have ever had more cautions than Sunday.

— Kyle Larson was a lap down — and finished 13th! Trevor Bayne, whose car appears on the crash report twice, finished third!

Given all that, it’s understandable if people look at the results and go, “Ugh, what a joke.” Not to go all #WellActually on you, but it really was a good race up until the point the carnage broke out.

Think about it: The first Big One didn’t take place until there were 17 laps to go. Prior to that, the field was two-, three- and even four-wide in a brilliant display of how good plate racing can be. There were lead changes and strategy and dicey moves, and no one spent time hanging at the back trying to avoid the wreck.

They actually raced.

Only at the end, when it was Go Time, did it really get crazy and kind of ridiculous. But that’s not really a surprise; after all, it’s Talladega.

As long as cars aren’t flipping or flying — which they didn’t on Sunday — the rest of it is just side effect of what was a pretty thrilling show.

2. Master Kes

For a last-lap pass, there didn’t seem to be too much excitement from the crowd at Talladega. The fans seemed deflated after Dale Earnhardt Jr. finished seventh, so even Brad Keselowski’s thrilling move didn’t save the day for them.

But it was fitting that Keselowski won Earnhardt’s final plate race, because it was a symbolic passing of the torch from the best plate racer of this generation to the next.

Keselowski has now won at Talladega five times and six wins overall in restrictor-plate points races. Earnhardt finished his career with six Talladega wins and had 10 plate wins in points races.

Though Talladega unquestionably contains a lot of randomness in surviving long enough to be there at the end, the actual winning moves often require a very specific skill. And Keselowski might be the best at it.

We often see the race leader be able to block a late run. But Ryan Newman couldn’t do it — granted, he had some degree of nose damage — and Keselowski ended up playing the finish perfectly. He deserves a ton of credit for the execution.

“You’d love to be able to pat yourself on the back and say it’s all skill, but there is some luck that’s involved in this,” Keselowski said. “… You know when you come here that probably three out of every four races you’re going to get caught up in a wreck or something like that happens.

“But the races where you have the good fortune, where you don’t get caught up in a wreck or you don’t have something break or any of those things, you have to take those races, run up front and win them. And I think that’s what we’ve been able to do.”

Junior Nation probably doesn’t give a crap about all this, given their disappointment, but it’s important to recognize we’re watching a rare and unique talent when Keselowski has the chance to win at Talladega.

3. Playoff race?

Fans still give Kyle Busch a hard time for saying Talladega and Daytona aren’t “real” racing. But seriously — is it? And does it belong in the playoffs?

Those questions are likely to pop up after a day when only two of the 12 playoff drivers finished on the lead lap.

“I’m sure there are a lot of competitors who say they wish (Talladega wasn’t in the playoffs), because you can’t control your own fate,” Denny Hamlin said after finishing sixth. “In no other sport does your competition make a mistake and it cost you. In our sport, it does.”

Hamlin suggested to NBC Sports last week that Talladega should be the regular season finale instead of a playoff race.

And indeed, that seems like a better solution. It doesn’t feel right in a lot of ways for the outcome of a championship to be impacted by an event with so much randomness. Because, let’s be honest: Kyle Busch was right.

Whether it’s “real racing” or not, though, it definitely won’t be changing anytime soon.

“I don’t know that there’s a desire to have a different product here at this type of racetrack,” said Ryan Newman, who was once one of the most outspoken drivers against plate racing.

4. Dale Jr.’s health

There were tens of thousands of people rooting for Earnhardt to win his final restrictor-plate race, which felt like his last, best shot at a victory before he retires.

Personally, I was just hoping he made it through the race without getting another concussion.

That sounds sort of dark, but it’s the truth. All season, I’ve thought in the back of my head: “I wonder if he can get through the plate races without suffering a huge hit.” And — luckily — he did. He had to make it through three close calls to do it, but he survived.

“This was one that I was worried about in the back of my mind,” Earnhardt said afterward. “I was a little concerned. But you can’t win the race if you race scared, and I’ve raced scared here before, and you don’t do well when that happens. So you have to block it out and just go out there and take the risks and hope that it’s just not your day to get in one of those accidents. And it wasn’t.”

Earnhardt fans didn’t get the win they wanted, but this was also a victory: Their driver competed for the win all day and left with his health intact, meaning he just has to make it five more races.

Wrecks can happen anywhere, but the chances sure are a lot lower at other tracks.

And along those lines, Earnhardt felt that by racing hard, he proved something to the critics who charged he has been too timid at times this season.

“Anyone who questions our desire to be here and compete this year and our desire to run hard and face can look at the risks that we took this afternoon, knowing that any of those crashes would have probably given me a bit of an injury that would have held me out of the rest of the season,” he said.

5. Pointed situation

Kyle Busch might not make it past Round 2 of the playoffs.

That’s crazy, isn’t it? All year long, it’s pretty much been a Martin Truex Jr./Busch/Kyle Larson show. Those three seemed to be the main title contenders going into the playoffs, and the conventional wisdom was Busch was at least a lock for Round 3 thanks to his 41 playoff points.

Welp…

Busch is currently seven points behind Jimmie Johnson for the final playoff spot entering Kansas. And Matt Kenseth is just one point behind him, so it’s not like he can focus just on beating one or two drivers next week.

Yeah, he could go win there — Busch has five straight top-five finishes at Kansas, including a victory last year in the spring. But there’s a very real chance he could fail to make the cut.

On a similar note, Johnson could be out if he doesn’t have a good run — which is also hard to believe.

I doubt many of us would have predicted two of the elite Toyotas or the seven-time champion would be in danger of failing to make it past Round 2, but that’s the case. And it’s going to make Kansas a very interesting cutoff race.

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Stage points will change the face of Talladega race

Sunday’s race has a chance to be the most action-packed playoff event at Talladega in years — at least from start to finish.

That might sound like hyperbole — the kind you see in all the TV commercials that try to get people to tune in — but there’s reason to believe it might actually be true.

Why? Because two major changes have made it to where playoff drivers simply cannot afford to ride around for 500 miles and wait to race until the end.

First of all, Talladega is now the second race of Round 2 instead of the elimination race. That means drivers have less of a points cushion than they would if two races were already under their belts, so they can’t just try and protect a lead.

Second, the stage points are going to be a massive factor in shaping the race. Playoff drivers absolutely cannot afford to lay back and pass up the opportunity to get a potential 20 stage points.

That means the scramble for stage points at the end of Stages 1 and 2 — which conclude on Lap 55 and Lap 110, respectively — might be extremely dicey.

“We’ve seen in the past that drivers come in here and say, ‘I’ve just got to finish 25th,'” Joey Logano said Friday. “Then they just ride around the back all day until it’s the end of the race and they go up and finish 25th.

“Well, that’s pretty boring. Fans don’t want to see that, so NASCAR has made some good decisions, I think, by making this not the final race in this round, and then also adding the stages you can’t afford to give up those stage points.”

Let’s say a driver gets a fifth-place finish but ends up with no stage points. That’s only 35 points, which Logano noted isn’t that great of a day considering five drivers scored more than 40 points last week at Charlotte.

Ricky Stenhouse Jr., who needs to rely on stage points to overcome his current deficit, predicted “at least 10 of us racing really hard for that.”

“There are a lot of us within 20 points of each other, so I think that’s gonna be key is how hard we’re gonna race for those stage points,” he said.

Stenhouse isn’t the only one looking at stage points as a key factor in the race. Chase Elliott said his philosophy has been his team needs to use stage points to make up for a lack of playoff points at the start of each round.

“Stage points are really our only way of catching up,” he said. “That’s something I have looked at and something everyone else is looking at, too.”

That said, Elliott doesn’t think those points will be worth making an overly aggressive move at the possible expense of the overall finish.

“I definitely think there is going to be some emphasis on running well in the stages, but I just hope that everybody will want to get to the end as much as they want to have stage finishes, too,” he said. “So I really don’t know, but I could see it being pretty wild to try and get those points.”

 

 

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Was Parker Kligerman too aggressive? He explains winning strategy

En route to taking the underdog No. 75 truck to a win at Talladega Superspeedway on Saturday, Parker Kligerman ruffled feathers with some aggressive pushing that left drivers complaining on the radio.

Christopher Bell, Ben Rhodes and Grant Enfinger were among the drivers who told their spotters to tell Kligerman to back off at various points during the race.

“Try not to let that 75 get behind me,” Rhodes said at one point.

“Get him off me, man!” Bell said late in the race. “Get him off me!”

So were all the complaints justified, or were those drivers just not used to taking a push?

“There’s some incredibly talented drivers out there, but I think we forgot how to tandem a little bit,” Kligerman said when asked. “We’re not allowed to tandem, but if you watch Joey Logano in the Xfinity car (at plate races) in the last couple years, he does that tap-tap-tap thing.”

That “tap-tap-tap thing” is a borderline bump draft, but legal because the vehicles are not locking bumpers. So as long as the bumpers aren’t together for more than a couple seconds, NASCAR is fine with that.

Kligerman decided if he could make that happen with the current rules package, “then we’ve got to do that.” And the best time to do so would be in the first two stages, when there were built-in cautions to help with experimentation.

His reaction to hearing a few drivers were upset?

“Whatever. I thought we were here to race,” he said. “… I didn’t spin anyone out, so I think it worked. We passed a lot of trucks and got ourselves to the front a couple times. And when it came down to it, all of them were doing the same thing. So I don’t see any harm or foul.”

Chris Carrier, Kligerman’s crew chief, heard the question and asked if he chimed in. His take was decidedly more blunt.

“I’ve been a crew chief for 40-some years,” he said. “The guys I see complaining are the guys who want to be Sunday drivers. They’d better grow up. If you don’t want to cut the grass, you’d better not mind getting grass in your shoes. That’s part of it, like it or not. Grow up.”

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DraftKings Fantasy NASCAR Advice For Daytona Coke Zero 400

Restrictor-plate races are so freaking hard to predict, which makes them fun to watch but agonizing when there’s money on the line.

So for those playing DraftKings this weekend — and there’s a $350,000 total payout contest, so that includes me — a bit of extra strategy is needed. I hopped on the phone with DraftKings’ Pearce Dietrich on Friday morning to go over some lineup ideas for the race.

“What I’m going to suggest is going to make people throw up a little bit,” Dietrich said. “Don’t even worry about the drivers or track history. If you look at the past leaderboards, you just pick guys from the back. It sounds crazy, stupid, ridiculous, but the best starting position on the optimal lineup in the Daytona 500 was 26th.

“You’ve got to take the guys at the back. It happens at every plate race. But no one wants to do it.”

Dietrich is right: It’s not exactly appetizing, but the best bet is to rely heavily on place differential. DraftKings scoring is plus or minus one point for every position gained, and laps led (0.25 points) and fast laps (0.5 points) just aren’t going to matter as much at Daytona. So it’s banking on drivers who qualify poorly but end up surviving the wrecks and finishing well.

The best possible lineup in the Daytona 500 was Ryan Blaney, AJ Allmendinger, Paul Menard, Michael Waltrip, Brendan Gaughan and Kasey Kahne. At last summer’s Daytona race, it was Michael McDowell, Cole Whitt, David Ragan, Clint Bowyer, Brad Keselowski and Trevor Bayne.

Those lineups involved leaving lots of salary cap money on the table ($10,000 for the 500), but it doesn’t matter. Dietrich said to resist the urge to take drivers who start in the top half of the field.

“It’s like, ‘Yeah, right, you’re crazy, I’m picking Denny Hamlin because he’s good at the plate tracks,'” Dietrich said. “But that’s not going to win you $50,000.”

That’s why my lineup for Daytona is Landon Cassill, Ty Dillon, David Ragan, Elliott Sadler, Martin Truex Jr. and Cole Whitt — all of whom start 25th or worse. And even that might be a little too high in the lineup.

My lineup of Daytona drivers was $11,900 under the salary cap — which seems nuts, but that’s supposedly the right call.

“Even when people read this, it’s still going to be hard to leave money on the table,” Dietrich said. “But the facts are there. This is how you win. Do this for just one week only and go back to the normal strategy next week.”

 

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I’m playing DraftKings this season and will be posting my picks here each week. Disclosure: If you want to play and sign up using this link, DraftKings will give my website a commission. Disclosure No. 2: I might be America’s worst daily fantasy player.

Last race’s results: Played $8 MEGA Beast and finished 9,600th out of 47,000; won $12.

Season results: $38 wagered, $49 won in 12 contests.

This week’s contest: $9 Firecracker ($350,000 total payout).

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The Top Five: Breaking down the Talladega NASCAR race

Five thoughts on Sunday’s NASCAR race at Talladega Superspeedway…

1. First-time winner, but no fluke

Both of this year’s restrictor-plate races have been won by drivers who had never won on a plate track before (or anywhere, in Ricky Stenhouse Jr.’s case).

That’s surprising in a time where the current plate package seemed to favor a few drivers who had perfected how to manipulate the draft once they got a lead: Brad Keselowski, Denny Hamlin, Joey Logano, Dale Earnhardt Jr., to name a few.

Kyle Busch is one of the good ones, too — but he seemed to get snookered by Stenhouse in overtime.

So what the heck happened?

When Stenhouse moved up to block Kasey Kahne’s run on the top side, Busch moved up to block Stenhouse — expecting to take away his momentum or at least get a shove.

And actually, Busch got what he wanted: A shot from behind. But to his surprise, it didn’t advance him.

“He got to my back bumper and actually hit me, and I thought that was going to shoot me forward,” Busch said. “He just turned left and passed me after hitting me. So, pretty impressive.”

Busch wasn’t being sarcastic; he meant it. It was impressive, and he repeated the term later in a second interview. Stenhouse deserved to win this race.

There have been fluky winners on restrictor-plate races throughout history, but Stenhouse isn’t one of them. For one thing, he started from the pole — which means Roush Fenway Racing built a very fast speedway car. And Talladega is also tied with Bristol for Stenhouse’s best track — he has a 10.4 average finish at both.

Look, it’s hard to read too much into any plate victory, because nothing translates to a “real racetrack” (as Busch put it Sunday).

But Roush Fenway really does seem to have something good going on this season. Stenhouse is now in the playoffs (wow!) and Trevor Bayne would also be in if it started today (he’s 16th in the standings).

Clearly, there’s been a lot of improvement over the offseason for a team whose three cars finished 21st, 22nd and 23rd in the point standings last season.

“(Over) the offseason, the whole attitude at our shop changed, and the people in each department were putting in more hours and working harder to make sure we started the season as best we could,” Stenhouse said. “We started a little stronger than we thought we would, but then we’ve also continued to make gains and continued to up our performance.”

2. The joy of winning

I’m sure this story is going to be everywhere, but this still deserves mention because, well, it’s completely awesome.

Apparently, Ricky Stenhouse Sr. was briefly detained by track security after the race while trying to get to victory lane and celebrate with his son.

Here’s the story, as told by Talladega public relations chief Russell Branham:

He was extremely excited about his son winning today, and naturally so. He was actually perched on the back straightaway up top the Alabama Gang Superstretch in an RV.

His son wins the race, he goes down, he tries to find a way to get across the track. He tried to climb the fence, found out he couldn’t. He begins running down outside of the perimeter road of Turn 3 outside the venue. He wants to go through the tunnel and get in here.

Our (security) guys saw it. Naturally, they stopped him, asked him who he was, said, ‘Would you get in the car?’ They placed him in the car, talked to him, they said, ‘Who are you?’

He said, ‘I’m Ricky Stenhouse’s father.’ (They said) ‘Hold on one second, sir. Let me call the director of security.’ Called our security, and our security guy said, ‘Take him to victory lane,’ and that’s what happened.

Seriously, how great is that? Even better is Stenhouse Jr. actually figured his dad would try to climb the fence (he did it before at Kentucky) and looked for Stenhouse Sr. when he came around on the cool-down lap.

“I went down the back straightaway after the race was over and looked up to see if he was there, but I didn’t see him,” Stenhouse Jr. said. “My dad has done so much for me in my career. … Everything that I know about racing I learned from him, and I’m glad that he was able to be here in victory lane.”

3. What’s up with Dale Jr.?

Dale Earnhardt Jr. was as discouraged as I’ve seen him in quite awhile following his 22nd-place finish.

Earnhardt, frustratingly to himself and his fans, wasn’t a factor all day after starting second. He scored no stage points — at a place where he’s normally toward the front — and failed to lead a lap at Talladega for only the fifth time in 34 career starts (and second time in a row).

The loose wheel at the end of the race ruined his shot at a good day, but the No. 88 car wasn’t a player anyway. So what gives?

Well, Earnhardt said he hasn’t loved this rules package at plate races after a horsepower change at the start of last season.

“When they changed the motor after (2015), it took a lot of the speed out of the cars as far as how they create runs and maintain runs and how you can put together passes and do things on the track,” he said. “Now everybody is just stuck side-by-side. If you aren’t in the first or second row, you really are just kind of riding behind those guys with nowhere really to go. You can’t do much about it, because the cars don’t create the runs like they used to.”

That makes sense if you look at the results. In 2015, Earnhardt finished third, first, first and second at the four plate races.

Since then, he’s finished 36th, 40th, 21st, 37th and 22nd.

“I’d change a few things if I was the king of this deal,” he said. “But as long as the fans enjoyed the show, we’ll keep going down the road with what we’ve got.”

If that’s the case, it doesn’t sound like winning one of his remaining two plate races is as great of a chance as it once was.

4. Air AJ

Airborne cars scare the crap out of me, but AJ Allmendinger played it pretty cool after he landed on his roof on Sunday. Allmendinger even joked he had a “nice flight” during the Big One.

“It’s better than some of the flights we take back home,” he said.

But what wasn’t as fun was hanging upside down in his No. 47 car as fluids leaked and Allmendinger waited for the safety crew to flip him back onto his wheels.

“Get me the hell back over,” he thought.

Allmendinger acknowledged he was worried the car would catch on fire, but said the key was to not panic. And he was reassured by the safety team’s rapid response.

“If they weren’t there that quick, I might have thought of trying to slide out,” he said. “But it kind of rolled over onto the window, so there wasn’t a lot of room that I was going to get out.”

Plus, he said, he didn’t want to loosen his belts and take another hit to the head, even though he joked “there’s not much in there to be that worried about.”

5. Snap away

NASCAR was featured as one of Snapchat’s Live Stories on Sunday and even had a new lens which could alter people’s faces.

But many fans were unable to use it due to the terrible cell phone reception at the track. Ugh. What a giant missed opportunity.

Granted, I still have Sprint, so maybe I just have a bad network. Some people had a signal (one of my friends has T-Mobile and said his worked). But I saw plenty of chatter from other people who had similar problems.

Talladega is in a relatively rural area, so you wouldn’t expect it would normally have decent cell service. And when about 70,000 people show up for a race, it certainly gets a lot worse.

But we live in an era where people want to share all their experiences via social media They want to show their friends where they are and what they’re doing. That’s basically free advertising for NASCAR! If fans can’t get any sort of cell service, though, a lot of that gets lost.

I don’t know what phone companies charge to bring in portable cell phone towers, but tracks need to figure out how to make it happen. Clearly, there isn’t a large-scale move to invest in wifi (though Daytona did it), so there needs to be another solution. Speedway Motorsports Inc. tracks have some sort of Verizon technology, but what about those of us who don’t have that carrier?

The whole NASCAR industry would benefit from better cell service at the tracks. This needs to be a very high priority on the list of fan amenities.