Raising the fence doesn't make Talladega cage safe

One of NASCAR's great dilemmas will surface again Sunday when the Sprint Cup drivers spin the roulette wheel at Talladega Superspeedway in Alabama.

Talladega is a track adored for its spectacle and abhorred for the fact that it produces gimmicky, dangerous racing that, in a worst-case scenario, just might kill somebody in the stands.

There was a possibility of just that happening in April at the last Sprint Cup race at Talladega. Carl Edwards' car went airborne and slammed into the safety fence in a moment that still makes everyone cringe.

Edwards walked away unhurt. The same could not be said for the seven fans who received medical attention because parts of Edwards' car flew through the catch-fence and into the spectators.

Officials have since raised the frontstretch fence at Talladega, reduced the size of the cars' restrictor plates by a hair and allowed teams to use something called a side wicker.

The last two moves are made to try and keep cars from getting airborne. The first one is to keep them on the track if they do.

But all of that is not nearly enough.

My late colleague David Poole railed against Talladega in his column that was published in our newspaper and on its Web sites the day he died – April 28, 2009.

Poole – one of the leading voices in NASCAR coverage for many years – wrote that racing at Talladega was out of control and that it could never be fixed by adjusting the cars. The track itself was so inherently flawed, Poole argued, that no solution short of making major alterations in the speedway itself would work.

“Change the size,” Poole wrote. “Cut the banking. Something. Anything seems better than having fans hurt and seeing a race car coming heart-in-your-throat close to flying into the stands.”

I completely agree.

But NASCAR is hesitant to make the necessary changes to Talladega, in large part because restrictor-plate racing makes for grand theater. The cars always run bunched together.

That looks great on TV. It also makes a slight misstep by any driver a potential catalyst for “The Big One” – the multicar crash that is always a heartbeat away.

Although some drivers have complaints about Talladega, others like it.

“For a fan, it doesn't get much better than that,” Juan Pablo Montoya said of Talladega. “I'll tell you the truth, I get a kick out of it.”

Former Lowe's Motor Speedway president Humpy Wheeler told Poole for that column in April that danger is part of racing's appeal, but that it must be danger that is controlled.

“You can't de-fang the tiger,” Wheeler said, “because people pay to see the sharp teeth. But you can't turn him loose, either.”

No one spoke with quite the same starkness about Talladega as Edwards did immediately after his Ford went airborne and smashed that safety fence, almost mirroring a crash that Bobby Allison had at Talladega in 1987.

“I guess we'll do this until someone gets killed,” Edwards said, “and then we'll change it.”

Maybe.

But for now, the tiger at Talladega is still on the loose.

Scott Fowler: sfowler@charlotteobserver.com; 704-358-5140.0

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