Talladega Superspeedy may be a track that has been known to produce surprise winners, but make no mistake, many great drivers have found a way to tame the world’s largest oval.
In fact, the winningest drivers in Talladega history are all NASCAR Hall-of-Fame inductees and a future inductee.
Dale Earnhardt is the winningest driver in Talladega history with 10 Cup Series wins. His son, Dale Jr, is tied with two other drivers for second place with six wins.
The other two?
Jeff Gordon and Brad Keselowski. The latter of the two looks to take the second-place spot all to himself in this Sunday's Geico 500.
The driver of the No. 6 Castrol Carbon Neutral Ford won last spring’s race at Talladega and is always a favorite at ‘Dega. But he now is racing for a new team.
During the off-season, Keselowski became the co-owner of the newly renamed RFK Racing (previously known as Roush Fenway Racing). RFK hasn’t won a Cup Series race since 2017, but if there’s any driver and track combo that could end the drought, it’s Keselowski at Talladega.
“For me, obviously Talladega is a special place in my mind and always will be,” Keselowski said. “It is a place of unknowns in a lot of cases, but fortunately I’ve been able to be very successful there now with six victories, which is a hard feat at any one track.”
Keselowski’s first victory at Talladega (and first Cup Series victory overall) came in 2009 when he won in surprise fashion driving for Phoenix Racing. Since then, all of his victories have come driving for the powerhouse Team Penske.
But despite the new team and the new Next Generation car, don’t count out Keselowski just yet. He has already proven he can still win at a superspeedway earlier this year when he won his Daytona 500 qualifying race in February.
Granted, the Duel races feature a smaller field. But his win at Daytona showed that Keselowski learned a lot from preseason testing.
“I’m going to keep learning about these cars every time I get in them, and there’s a lot to learn, and they keep changing so much,” Keselowski said following his Duel win. “We came down here (Daytona) for the test, and our car was not very good, didn’t have a lot of speed, drove really bad.
"I knew we made a lot of changes from the test to come down here and learned a lot accordingly, and I was trying to kind of reset my brain from what I had at the test session because what I had at the test session was hey, if you can just make 200 laps you’ll be doing good.”
If Keselowski can make it through 188 laps Sunday, he’ll have had a good race. And who knows? Maybe the No. 6 car reach victory lane there for the first time since it did with Mark Martin in 1997.
“We all know most of Sunday is about survival, but we also know our superspeedway cars at RFK consistently perform at a high level,” Keselowski said. “Proud to have Castrol on board with us and help carry the carbon neutral and sustainability banner as we try and go for yet another Talladega victory.”
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