Track Skinny - Nascar - Dale Earnhardt, Jr

Talladega Superspeedway is a 2.66-mile track with towering, daunting, Bristol-style turns linked by endless straightaways. To stay on banking this high, three lanes up, you must be traveling in the neighborhood of 100 mph, or else gravity will gain command, causing the car to topple over. And, at this speed, in this much of a swoop around a corner, there is no need for steering. The car has yielded to centrifugal force. Talladega has had a lifelong tumultuous affair with the laws of physics.

--From The Racetracks Book. To order your copy, visit www.sportingnews.com/books/nascar.

DALE EARNHARDT JR. GIVES US THE RUNAROUND

Dale Earnhardt Jr., has won the last four Talladega races (someone named Dale Earnhardt has won seven of the last nine races There), recently gave Insider Lee Spencer a virtual spin around the track.

There aren't many things a driver can do to make a big difference at Talladega, it depends on the car more than most. But there are some things you can do to shorten the track up and use the power range of the motor to your best ability on certain parts of the back. You find the best rpm range and hold it there throughout the whole lap. Running the shortest lap is about a car length off the bottom on the racetrack. Going into Turn 1 you drive down into the corner. Down there, there are a couple of good bumps in the center, then you're off of Turn 2 and you're trying to hold the wheel straight. You don't want the wheel to turn or the car to wander around, so you held the wheel real straight.

Off of the corner, you want to keep as low down as possible in the torque range so you can shoot down the straightaway, and the torque will help you accelerate down the straightaway. Again, down the back straightaway you want to keep the car about a lane to a lane and a half off of the apron, then hold the car down into Turn 3. Turn 3 is really easy. There aren't many big bumps--just one coming off the tunnel in rum 4. There's a lot of tar and sealer in the cracks around that corner, so you can skate around and lose speed that way if you're not careful. But you try to miss that and keep the car low in the corner, then down as close as you can toward the apron into the trioval to keep the track as short as you can. Lately, we've been running Daytona and Talladega without a lot of cautions, so it puts more pressure on the driver not to make mistakes coming onto and getting off of pit road.

What song is it you want to hear? At Talladega, where "Free Bird" is a popular choice, Dale Earnhardt Jr. ranks up there with Lynyrd Skynyrd and everything else that celebrates Alabama. But he won't get his fifth straight victory at the track. Junior won there in April only after pulling off a controversial pass, and others, including Richard Childress Racing, are gaining on Dale Earnhardt Inc. at the plate tracks. Give the nod to Kevin Harvick.

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