GEICO 500 preview, forecast and prediction: NASCAR from Talladega

Looking for NASCAR’s most unpredictable race? Talladega might provide it in the form of the GEICO 500.

If someone tells you they know what’s going to happen at the spring race at Talladega Superspeedway before it happens, they may actually be from the future. None of the rest of us knows what the GEICO 500 might hold.

The Big One? Always a possibility, especially with the vehicular carnage that happened last year (and earlier this year at Daytona). Yet the race has also been run without a caution in the past.

A surprise winner? That happened just a few years back when David Ragan took the checkered flag. Still, the last two race winners here were Brad Keselowski and Dale Earnhardt Jr., both of whom have done it three times.

Throw in less practice time than usual thanks to rain on Friday, stage racing making its Talladega debut and a starting lineup that is a little more mixed up than usual (Ricky Stenhouse Jr. on the pole for the first time in years! Points leaser Kyle Larson starting 21st!) and the GEICO 500 is setting up to be the race that turns what you thought you knew about the 2017 Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series season and set it on its head.

That could also make it a lot of fun, unless your driver is one whose car ends up all torn up. Expect the unexpected, pick the right lanes at the right times and avoid trouble not of your making. No problem, right?

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Forecast

The weather so far this season has tended toward one extreme or the other in many cases, but Talladega could offer an exception. The Weather Channel is calling for sunshine and temperatures in the low 70s during the GEICO 500 and only light winds. Those are conditions that crew chiefs should definitely be able to work with, and it doesn’t appear much will change on the track for the duration of the race.

Three things to watch

• Roush Fenway revival? Pretty soon, we’re going to have to admit that Ricky Stenhouse Jr. is figuring it out. Stenhouse captured the pole in qualifying and has been unusually fast by his standards the past few weeks. Teammate Trevor Bayne is starting fifth and we know he can find Victory Lane at a big restrictor plate race. Roush Fenway has a long way to go to recapture its past glory, but it finally might be on the right track.
• Junior’s Talladega swan song. Nothing would be more popular than Dale Earnhardt Jr. figuring out a way to win the GEICO 500. The retiring superstar has had a disappointing start to his final Cup Series campaign, but if there was ever a track where you figured he might break out of his rut, this is it. He won this race just two years ago and had enough speed to start on the outside of Row 1.  He’s definitely got a shot.
• Obligatory Joe Gibbs Racing mention. This is now race 10 and JGR is still winless as a team. All four cards are starting in the top 11, though this might be the track that means less than anywhere else. The drought has to end some week, but we’ve also been saying that for a month.

Prediction

Call us emotional, sappy or whatever. It just feels like Dale Earnhardt Jr. is going to get a victory during his victory tour, and where else would be a better place to predict it than Talladega? When he’s had the car to do it, he’s done things in the past that other drivers simply can’t, and his qualifying speed is a pleasant hint that he might once again have the horsepower he needs to be his old self.

And for our GEICO 500 dark horse pick, we’re riding with the 77 of Erik Jones. The Cup Series rookie showed he knew how to handle the draft and make the right line decisions in Saturday’s XFINITY Series race all the way until the closing laps, when he finally guessed wrong when he could least afford it — and he still ended up finishing fifth. It would not be shocking at all to see him in the mix at the end on Sunday.