What The Metrics Had To Say About Talladega
The world of sports data is constantly changing, with more information available to teams, athletes, and even the common fan that can be used to predict performance trends. NASCAR is no different, and the author of this post has built several analytical metrics to help give race fans a more advanced view of the action on the track—because, as any driver can attest, auto racing isn't always a fair sport.
The following numbers—explained in full detail here—are designed to measure driver performance in various aspects of each race, many of which come from NASCAR’s Loop Data. They are ranked by True Driver Rating (TDR), a variation on NASCAR’s Driver Rating, which incorporates factors such as speed, track position, passing, luck, and equipment strength to best estimate how well each driver performed during an event.
The metrics from Sunday's YellaWood 500 at Talladega Superspeedway are as shown below:
It should come as no surprise that Talladega was full of chaos. The only surprising part of Sunday's race was that it took as long as it did, as up until five laps to go, it was a fairly clean race. Then Brad Keselowski got into Austin Cindric on the backstretch and triggered a 28-car pileup that turned the race completely upside-down.
Ricky Stenhouse, Jr. ended up scoring the win in a photo finish over Keselowski, who himself had made a late charge to the front after running midpack for most of the afternoon. Behind them, as well as William Byron and Kyle Larson in third and fourth, the results read like a random number generator of whoever happened to miss the carnage.
Because of that, it's safe to say the metrics sheet looks a lot different from the finishing order. Cindric earned the top TDR score with a 237.78, as he recorded the best Average Running Position (by a wide margin) and was leading at the time he was taken out in the accident. Cindric also led the field in Equipment-Adjusted Running Position Score (EARP) and recorded the highest share of Expected Wins Earned (XWE), with .4235.
Perhaps surprisingly coming in second was Alex Bowman, as he did not make much noise near the front on Sunday. There was clearly a reason for that, though, as he was hampered by a number of issues on pit road that cost him valuable track position. His +53 Pass Differential was the highest mark of any driver, as were his scores in True Pass Differential and True Passer Rating.
Stenhouse ended up third, followed by Larson, but those two along with William Byron in seventh were the only top-10 finishers anywhere near the front in the metrics. Most of the other drivers who ran the best races were eliminated in the wreck, with Cindric, Joey Logano, Chase Briscoe, and Chase Elliott all scoring in the TDR top 10 but finishing 29th or worse.
On the flip side of the coin, there were those who benefitted from the carnage. Justin Haley, Erik Jones, Austin Dillon, and Denny Hamlin all finished in the top 10 while ranking outside the top 20 in the metrics, Hamlin in particular massively lucking out. Before the wreck, he had lost the draft and was running 32nd, but ended up finishing 10th and may have been saved from playoff elimination next week. Carson Hocevar, Martin Truex, Jr., and Cody Ware also finished just outside the top 10 despite exceptionally low TDR scores.
Unsurprisingly, Talladega's Fairness Rating came in as disgustingly low, at .1174. That's the lowest of the 2024 season, in fact, surpassing the Daytona 500 (.2544) and dropping the season average to .6364 in what remains arguably the most unfair Cup Series season ever. With only five races left, one can only hope it at least ends on a positive note.