Next Stop Talladega Superspeedway for Sunday’s Camping World-dot-com 500, the sixth race of the 2015 Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup and the final race in the Contender Round. For the twelve drivers remaining in the title hunt, there are 1,576.08 “Miles-2-Miami.” The twelfth edition of the post-season Chase will conclude November 22nd at Homestead-Miami Speedway, at which time only four drivers will remain in championship contention. Much attention will be focused on a pair of drivers this weekend. Dale Earnhardt Junior is a six-time Talladega winner and was victorious in this year’s first race there back on May 3rd He’s going for a season sweep and if successful, would be the first driver to do so since Jeff Gordon in 2007.
Earnhardt entered this year’s post-season as the Number-6 seed but is currently among the bottom four in the Chase standings, thirty-one points below the eighth-place cutoff … At the opposite end of the spectrum is Team Penske’s Joey Logano, who’s won two straight races and is the only driver guaranteed a spot in the eight-man Eliminator Round that opens November 1st at Martinsville Speedway. The last driver to win three straight Chase races is Jimmie Johnson, who put four in a row together on his way to the 2007 championship.
THE NASCAR CAMPING WORLD TRUCK SERIES … also competes at Talladega this weekend with Saturday’s Fred’s 250 Powered by Coca-Cola. It’s a tight championship battle here with the top three drivers separated by sixteen points with five races remaining. Rookie Erik Jones has a four-point edge over two-time defending series champion Matt Crafton. Tyler Reddick is third. Of those three, Reddick had the best finish in last year’s race at ’Dega … fourth place. Jones ran sixth and Crafton was fourteenth.
THE X-FINITY SERIES … is in the early stages of a three-week break – returning to competition Saturday, November 7th, in Fort Worth, Texas. Chris Buescher has been atop the standings since mid-May and holds a twenty-seven-point lead over defending series champion Chase Elliott with three races left.
