By Jared Turner Martin Truex Jr. has accomplished virtually everything else this year, so why not add a restrictor-plate victory to his crowded 2017 resume? A four-time Talladega winner, Brad Keselowski has been NASCAR’s most consistent restrictor-plate racer over the past few years. There’s no track in NASCAR where Dale Earnhardt Jr. has been more successful or is more adored than Talladega. Jamie McMurray, whose quiet consistency in 2017 has taken him farther than many expected, is one of NASCAR’s most underrated restrictor-plate racers. Thanks to wins in the two most recent restrictor-plate races, Ricky Stenhouse Jr. arrives at Talladega in the…

By Jared Turner Buckle your seatbelts. The Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series playoffs are about to get wild. With one race down and two to go in the Round of 12, Sunday’s race at Talladega Superspeedway has all the potential in the world to be a game-changer. As the only restrictor-plate race in the playoffs, Talladega narrows the playing field between the haves and the have-nots in such a way that virtually anyone can end up in Victory Lane. All things considered, a more equal playing field is not a bad thing. However, the downside to competing at the high-speed 2.66-mile track…

By Jared Turner One of the oddest and most inexcusable moments of the 2017 NASCAR season occurred over the weekend at Charlotte Motor Speedway when current driver Erik Jones and former driver turned NASCAR on NBC announcer Jeff Burton plowed into a staircase — yes, you read that correctly — while driving the NBC demonstration car on Saturday for a segment airing as part of the network’s coverage of the race weekend. The stairs, which obviously weren’t supposed to be out on the track at that time, are used to let fans and officials get from the stands to the infield when…