After countless hurdles and years of mounting expectations, Wallace has become the first Black Nascar driver to claim a checkered flag since Wendell Scott’s Jacksonville win in 1963
To win in Nascar, it takes the right mix of skill and luck. At Talladega, it helps to have more of the latter.
Like Daytona, Talladega is what’s known as a superspeedway – the sport’s biggest oval circuit, a banked, 2.66-mile strip in east-central
Alabama that was once home to Air Force twin-engine fighters. For the better part of 500 miles Nascar’s pilots wrestle to keep all four wheels planted while racing in giant packs that sometimes run four and five abreast. In these turbulent formations, emotions and tire temperatures run high. It doesn’t take much – a momentary lapse in concentration, a betrayed alliance between pusher and pushee, a hot dog wrapper wafting in from the grandstand – to set off The Big One, the dreaded, accordion-style crash that shoots cars into the air, taking out the grid in chunks.