Mike Hembree: Something Talladega this way comes
Contact between Phoenix Racing's Brad Keselowski and Roush Fenway Racing's Carl Edwards sends Edwards' No. 99 Ford into the fence on the last lap of the Aaron's 499 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series at Talladega Superspeedway in April. // David Griffin, NASCAR Scene
COMMENTARY
TALLADEGA, Ala. – Since I first stepped onto the grounds of Talladega Superspeedway (then Alabama International Motor Speedway) in the spring of 1975, the place always has reminded me of one of my favorite authors, Ray Bradbury, and one of his best books, Something Wicked This Way Comes.
The novel centers on an unusual traveling carnival, its visit to a small town and the mayhem that ensues.
If there was ever a ready-made carnival atmosphere in NASCAR, it is here, where the racing and the revelry go hand in hand as some of the wildest in the sport. When Bill France Sr. designed Talladega to be a faster, wider, more on-the-edge version of his near-perfect speedway in Daytona Beach, he had no idea of the calamity, misadventure and wild mix of good and bad times to come.
Some called the track a white elephant from the beginning. It was too big, too fast, too much. Early tire tests sent up warning flares, and drivers arrived at the track to find the rubber couldn’t handle the road. As the first race approached in September 1969, even the brave men who drove race cars at ridiculous speeds in heavy traffic were wondering if this was a good idea.
That first Talladega race was legendary, of course, and for all the wrong reasons. The hastily formed Professional Drivers Association, led by none other than Richard Petty, voted to boycott the event because of the fact that tires wouldn’t stay underneath their cars. France, indignant, held the race anyway with a patchwork field of lesser-known series regulars and occasional drivers whose fan bases included mostly members of their own families.
It was an inauspicious start, and it colored racing at Talladega for years to come. Soon, though, tire technology caught up with the demands of the track, and racing at the sport’s longest track took on an air of excitement and suspense. There were no restrictor plates in those days, and watching the 40-car packs roar through the banking at both ends of the speedway was a remarkable sight that could be witnessed nowhere else on the circuit. Or in the world, for that matter.
Still, Talladega came with more than a dollop of terror. With speeds zooming past 200 miles per hour and cars racing in giant traffic jams, every spinout brought the possibility of bedlam. But this track came to be haunted not only by on-track deaths but also by strange occurrences inside and around the speedway.
Driver Bobby Isaac parked his car during a race, claiming he had heard voices that told him to quit. … A member of Richard Petty’s team died in a bizarre pit-road incident. … The mother of racer David Sisco was killed when hit by a truck in the infield. … Star driver Davey Allison died in an infield helicopter crash. … Flying cars zoomed over the track’s wall, and others threatened to soar into the grandstands.
Out here in the Alabama Outback, many of the locals claim the track lives under an old Indian curse because France chose to build it on a Native American burial ground, a nice story but one that has been debunked by historians.
Still, you wonder about this place. It rises from what probably should be Alabama farmland like an out-of-place architectural anomaly, an at-speed funhouse filled with mirrors and booby traps. There is no other place like it, in this sport or any sport.
And here it comes again.
This time on Halloween weekend.
