Color By Numbers or How to Pick a Talladega Winner - Sprint Cup Aarons 499 Race Primer

You can throw out the record books for this one.

The Talladega Superspeedway is the largest track on the NASCAR Sprint Cup circuit at 2.66 tri-oval miles long. The Aarons 499 is one of two slated for the speedway, with the second race, the Talladega 500, coming on October 23.

Instead of making traditional picks based purely on some sort of statistical analysis or trends (that’ll come later), I asked my Facebook friends and Twitter followers (@Racing_Observer) the following:

“Everyone, give me a number...It has to be numbered 1-99 and can include 00.”

After just seconds of deliberation, the Ranting and Raving community predicted exactly how this Sunday’s Aarons 499 will play out. If that seems a bit random and silly, then you’ve likely never seen a NASCAR plate race.

The results of my experimentation can be found after the jump!

Ryan Adams (@funslinger on Twitter) predicted that no. 14, Tony Stewart would win the Aaron’s 499.

Our resident video game and paint scheme expert, Brett Hatfield (@Saiyavenger) predicted that no. 39, Ryan Newman would lead the most laps. Clearly, this thing came together fairly logical considering the parameters involved.

It’s clear that this race will be decided on a last-lap pass with Smoke finally jumping-off the back-bumper of Newman long enough to pass him at the line. The Stewart Haas tandem will be the predominant two-car “love bug” team of the day, allowing Newman to lead the most laps before the dramatic finish on lap 188.

My fellow employees at the Atlanta Bread Company picked numbers 22, 00, and 11, placing Kurt Busch, David Reutimann and Denny Hamlin safely within the top five.

Joshua Thomas (@thejoshthomas) selected numbers 24, 18, 78, 60 and 99. These unfortunate drivers are Jeff Gordon, Kyle Busch, Regan Smith, Todd Bodine and Carl Edwards. These and 18 other drivers will be collected in the Big One, a large multi-car accident that occurs in most every NASCAR plate race.

Josh also picked the number 23 in a separate lottery that determined the size of Sunday’s largest wreck.

Jeff Gordon and Kyle Busch were both involved in large crashes at Daytona in February and have traditionally had bad luck avoiding the big one in past seasons. It’s not farfetched especially when you look at Regan Smith’s 2011 season thus far.

In seven races, he has started among the top five in all but two. His worst qualifying effort was 12th. In the seven races, he has been involved in four accidents, and had a blown engine and a broken brake rotor ruin two other possible top-10 finishes.

What’s one more to prove a coin-toss prediction correct?

For those of you wanting my more traditional-style race preview, Jeff Gordon is the man at Talladega. He’s the winningest active driver in Sprint Cup racing with six wins at Talladega. His six wins, 13 top-fives, 17 top-10s and one pole are only marred only by the strong cars he’s trashed involved in the Big One.

Gordon has an average finish of 16.4 and a driver rating of 84.8, ninth-best in Sprint Cup. Talladega could easily be where the four-time champion turns his sights toward the Drive for Five.

Childress Racing has the proverbial horseshoe lately at Talladega, sweeping both races here last season with Kevin Harvick and Clint Bowyer respectively. Harvick beat Jamie McMurray by .011 seconds in a photo finish that took all three attempts in Overdrive.

Bowyer needed a last-lap push from Juan Pablo Montoya to overtake Harvick in the fall. Immediately following Bowyer’s victory, the Big One erupted behind the leaders, delaying Bowyer’s celebration for just a few more minutes.

Looking at the race-winner list at Talladega, the only guarantee is that there’s nothing guaranteed at all. It’s almost as if driver names were picked out of a hat...

Or Facebook.