Talladega Truck 250 Anticlimax And Rule Fiasco

Talladega debuted the Craftsman Trucks amid natural hype given the track's new pavement and the prospect of ferocious slicing and dicing for the win by the Trucks. Mark Martin, suddenly a lame duck with Ford, had the pole and looked to be the only chance to deny Toyota a Talladega win. As for those Toyotas, with so many of them and so few competitive Trucks of other makes, one could have expected another Toyota rout.

But then the green flag waved and all the prerace theories began falling apart. Mark Martin took off and held the lead, as most could have expected, but Talladega's form chart has been that the lead changes back and forth in lap after lap of sidedrafting. Out back there was plenty of four-abreast slicing and dicing for position and the field never split into two or more groups; the field stayed together in one huge fleet.

But the form chart was missing something big - the leader was hogging the bottom groove all the way around, and seemingly no one could attack outside and slice into the point. Martin had to pit to get a tear-off off his grille and he lost a lap only to get it back on one of the race's infrequent yellows. Johnny Benson led after the first yellow and pretty much held it with an authority rare for Talladega.

The lead changed hands, but despite some very aggressive push-drafting and some spectacular three-wide passing, taking the lead proved to be exceptionally difficult, with only 12 lead changes among nine drivers - and this segues into the race's signature blown call. After Martin swerved like Ernie Irvan to take away Todd Bodine's passing lane in the final 25 laps, Bodine finally got past but clipped the yellow line before One and got blackflagged.

The yellow line rule has been a problem since its first race in 2001, as a region of the racetrack that had never caused problem before when used as a passing lane is used to eliminate a potential winner from the race. NASCAR has to rethink this rule long and hard because it basically ended the race right there.

Talladega's debut with Craftsman Trucks proved decidedly anticlimatic. One can hope for a lot better from the Trucks come 2007.