talladega

Restrictor plate racing at Talladega this weekend.  Quick recap on my general approach to the plate track races -- I tend to play less overall and focus more on tournaments and less on cash games.  The randomness of the wrecks, etc. just takes so many things out of our control that it is really a free for all in these races.  Also, track history matters the least at these tracks so it's hard to do much useful preparation during the week since starting position is so critical.  The fact that we can't outwork our competition with pre-race research and preparation takes away a critical advantage that we have over the field most weeks.  It's the most important reason why I don't play as much on plate track weekends.

That said, here are some guys that I would be most interested in if their starting spots make sense:

• Joey Logano and Brad Keselowski -- Between them they've won 5 of the last 6 Talladega races.  Logano has 3 wins and BK has 2.  But, again, to show the randomness, Logano has also wrecked and finished 25th and 32nd in 2 of the last 5 races here.  Likewise, BK wrecked in one race and lost an engine in another to suffer finishes of 33rd and 38th in 2 of the last 5 races here.
• Kurt Busch -- Probably the closest thing to a consistent top finisher here of late.  He's finished in the Top 8 in 4 of the last 5 races and has Top 10 finishes in 6 of the last 8.
• Aric Almirola -- Also approaching consistent status with 4 straight Top 8 finishes here.
• Paul Menard -- Top 13 finishes in 7 of the last 10 Talladega races.
• David Ragan -- Won here in 2013.  In the last 3 races here, he's finished 10th, 10th and 6th with a collective +48 position difference.
• Ty Dillon -- In the last 3 races here, he's finished 13th, 11th and 15th with a collective +43 position difference.
• Rickey Stenhouse -- An interesting scenario this weekend.  He's the only non-Penske driver to win in the last 6 races here.  He's been pretty strong at plate tracks and has finished in the Top 5 in 3 of the last 4 races here.  But, he also wrecked about half the field in the last plate track race at Daytona in July.  So I'm concerned about him being less aggressive to avoid a repeat of that disaster and/or others being more aggressive with him remembering what he did in July.  I am thinking of him as the ultimate boom or bust kind of play, so I prefer him as a tournament only play.  But, if he doesn't qualify well, he could enter the cash game picture.
• On the flip side, Eric Jones has run into awful luck here.  In 3 Cup Series races here, he's finished 33rd, 36th and 39th.
  
• Likewise, Martin Truex has really struggled here of late.  In the last 4 races here, he's finished 40th, 35th, 23rd and 26th.