NASCAR playoffs roll into Talladega with cloud of lawsuit hanging over sport
TALLADEGA, Ala. (AP) — It's most fitting that NASCAR this weekend races at Talladega Superspeedway, sight of one of the first major disputes between drivers and the top stock car series in the United States.
It was at the Alabama track's 1969 debut race when the NASCAR-despised Professional Driver Association led by Richard Petty deemed the track too dangerous and not ready for competition.
The PDA wanted to postpone the race, NASCAR founder Bill France said no and things quickly turned contentious. So 36 of NASCAR's regulars boycotted the event, but France made sure the show went on without them.
And now here we are, 55 years later, back at Talladega with the France family again under challenge. This time from only two teams — the Michael Jordan-owned 23XI Racing and Front Row Motorsports — who this week filed an antitrust lawsuit against NASCAR over its charter system.
The two organizations are the only ones among 15 that refused to sign the take-it-or-leave-it agreement NASCAR dropped on the owners 48 hours before last month's playoff opener. They filed suit Wednesday against NASCAR, which is in the thick of the playoffs with six races remaining starting Sunday at Talladega.
“It's obviously the biggest story in the sport currently, and probably one of the biggest stories in a long time,” Hendrick Motorsports driver Kyle Larson said.
And so instead of the focus being on Sunday's middle race of the round of 12, where drivers need to secure their spot in the standings ahead of next week's elimination race at Charlotte, the talk is centered on the brewing legal battle.
Denny Hamlin, the three-time Daytona 500 winner who co-owns 23XI Racing with Jordan, said the lawsuit won't distract him from trying to win his first Cup Series championship. In fact, he's more motivated than ever. Hamlin is ranked fifth in the standings and a two-time Talladega winner.
"Make no mistake, the competitor in me, you don’t think I don’t want to come out here and win this weekend more than any?” Hamlin bristled Saturday. "That’s what I fuel myself on, making the 18-footer on hole 18 to win the match. Like, I live for those moments.
“Anyone that knows me personally will tell you that these moments, you’ll typically get more out of Denny, because I hate to lose and certainly will not justify any excuses to losing.”
Hall of Fame team owner Richard Childress confirmed to Fox Sports that NASCAR dropped the more than 100-page charter agreement — which is essentially the revenue sharing model — on Richard Childress Racing at 6:37 p.m. on Friday night Sept. 6, with a midnight deadline to sign it "or we'd lose our charters.
“I didn't have a choice because we had to sign,” Childress told Fox Sports. “We've got over 400 employees, contracts, and I've got to take care of my team.”
Michael McDowell won his fifth pole of the season on a superspeedway Saturday to give Front Row Motorsports — the other team in the antitrust lawsuit against NASCAR — the top starting spot at Talladega.
McDowell is not in the playoffs.
He has won six poles this year starting with Atlanta Motor Speedway in the second event of the season. McDowell was also the fastest qualifier in NASCAR's return to Atlanta, as well as both Talladega races and the August race in Daytona. His sixth pole was at Gateway outside St. Louis and that is not a superspeedway.
The record for most consecutive superspeedway poles is held by Bill Elliott, who won six straight at Talladega from 1985 through 1987. Elliott won two of those six races.
McDowell turned a lap at 183.063 mph to lead a Ford driver sweep in qualifying. Austin Cindric qualified second for Team Penske and McDowell teammate Todd Gilliland qualified third.
Kyle Busch, who is desperately trying to keep his streak of winning at least one race a year for a 20th consecutive season, qualified fourth in a Chevrolet for Richard Childress Racing.
Ryan Blaney, the reigning Cup Series champion and Penske teammate with Cindric, was fifth and followed by teammate Joey Logano and RCR driver Austin Dillon.
Hamlin was the highest-qualifying Toyota driver at eighth.
Tyler Reddick won Talladega in the spring as part of his march to the regular-season championship. But as he heads into Sunday's race, he's below the cutline for elimination and struggling to understand what happened to his 23XI Racing Toyota.
Reddick has an average finish of 19th through the first four races with one top-10 finish and 21 stage points. He was 25th last week at Kansas Speedway, where he won a year ago.
“Yeah, at this point it’s definitely a head-scratcher,” Reddick continued. “I feel like all of us coming off of the regular season, I felt no change in what I was doing. I don’t think anyone on this team has either. We just haven’t been putting together good races. We haven’t had speed; we haven’t been able to get stage points. It’s been tough.”
Reddick vowed to race Talladega on Sunday as he normally would and has no concern that NASCAR will be scrutinizing him because his race team is suing the sanctioning body.
“Not worried at all,” Reddick said.
NASCAR has supplied a new part to teams ahead of Sunday's race as part of an aerodynamic change designed to stop cars from going airborne.
The change is intended to increase the speed required for the cars to lift off. Josh Berry flipped in August at Daytona International Speedway, the same race where Michael McDowell went airborne but did not flip.
One week earlier, Corey LaJoie flipped at Michigan International Speedway.
The new parts add a rocker skirt to the side of the cars, while fabric was added to the inside of the right roof flap. The right-side roof rails were extended two inches with polycarbonate.
Talladega is a 2.66-mile oval with 33-degree banking.
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