Sprint Cup Series drivers race side-by-side at Talladega Superspeedway during the AMP Energy 500 on Sunday. (Photo: Rusty Jarrett/Getty Images for NASCAR)

 

TALLADEGA, Ala. - Thank goodness every race isn’t at Talladega. Thank goodness Halloween Weekend (Hallo-dega!) only comes once a year. Put the two together, and it’s a total eclipse of the NASCAR sun.

NASCAR reduces and enlarges the openings in the carburetor restrictor plates. Talladega Superspeedway raises the fences (no one wants those illegal-immigrant cars to enter the grandstands). The principal tells all the pupils about the evils of yellow lines and bump drafts.

But it’s all a matter of degrees. Degrees of wreckage. Degrees of smoke. Degrees of all things aberrant.

The Amp Energy 500 was a jolt to the system. It was as if, with only a few laps to go, a metal contraption was placed on the chest of the sport, and a doctor yelled "Clear!"

The monster awakens.

When the transporters arrive at the glistening campuses where teams are housed these days, and when the employees begin filing in to prepare for the next race, "When Johnny Comes Marching Home" ought to be playing through the intercom.

At the moment when the cataclysms begin, when one tiny bump causes another car to deliver a less tiny bump, and then a third bump, building steam, turns order into chaos and race cars into pinballs, the incidence of profanity greatly increases. The crashes induce something similar to short-term Tourette’s Syndrome.

The spectacle is something no one wants to see, but somehow no one can keep his eyes off it. Then, while everyone is saying "I hate that happened," they watch it replayed five times apiece from three different angles.

This enables them to really, really, really hate what happened.

Then there’s a guy, looking slightly bewildered, who climbs out of a car, with confetti flying and an inordinately large number of ballcaps nearby, and it takes him a while to really look like he belongs. His name was Jamie McMurray on Sunday. Earlier in the year, his name was Brad Keselowski.

Talladega Superspeedway - it deserves the "super" as much as the bowl — is both the land of opportunity and the state of dread. First a man walks a tightrope. Then he ducks fireballs. Then they pull him out of a crumpled car like it was hat and he was a rabbit.

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