Talladega has always sparked fear in drivers. The 2.66-mile drafting beast is known to cause fiery crashes that catch drivers by surprise. Kyle Larson reacts no differently to this racer-rattling speedway. The Hendrick Motorsports star may have tamed a lot of racetracks, but not drafting ones. He has run 14 races on drafting tracks without scoring a top-ten finish. And when you throw his poor performance in the 2024 playoffs in the mix, things get murkier.

Over the post-season, Larson struck gold only in Bristol. Besides that dominant 462/500 run, the No. 5 Chevy driver ran into one issue or another in the rest. So Larson has reason to feel jittery about the upcoming race at Talladega, the track that scares most Cup Series drivers.

Kyle Larson is clenching his teeth to face this

Last week’s Kansas race did not fare well for any playoff driver. No postseason racer earned an automatic advance through the round with Ross Chastain spoiling that opportunity with his season’s first win. Kyle Larson was among a slew of drivers who faced issues. A Lap 19 wall bump forced the former Cup champ to rally back onto the lead lap after a series of repairs. He could finish 26th last weekend. Not to mention, in the Round of 16, an early wreck in Atlanta left the top-seeded Larson with a 37th-place finish.

All these mishaps do not spell a fancy sight for Talladega Superspeedway. In a recent press conference, Kyle Larson harped on his misery: “Aside from Bristol, we just had a rough string of races. With Atlanta, me messing up and crashing there, Watkins Glen…we were off on speed at least on Saturday. But Sunday…just kind of put ourselves in a hole. Bristol went great, and then Kansas you know, we had the flat tires. So hopefully, we can get all of our bad runs out early in the playoffs, and can be smoother sailing from here on.” Larson added an apprehensive touch about Sunday’s race: “But we’re going to Talladega.” 

Holding only a single top-five – 4th place in spring 2022 at Talladega – Kyle Larson also has just an 18-point margin over the playoff cutline. So he is plenty nervous about the coming event. “Yeah, it’s hard to have a smooth weekend here,” he said. “With my track record here, I would have loved to have been more than 18 points above the cut line coming into this event…only have one top-five finish in my career. But we do a good job…if you dig back and look at the races, we do a good job and we’re up front at most of them. In the end, we just get caught up in a crash. Hopefully, this weekend’s a little different.”

However, Kyle Larson is not alone in this ordeal as a 23XI Racing star is walking on eggshells as well.

Larson’s rival is also struggling

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Ever since Tyler Reddick won the regular season championship, he has faced a slew of difficult runs. In the four races since the postseason dawned, the No. 45 23XI Racing driver is still searching for his first top-five finish. He has been hovering at a 19.5 finish, and Kansas spelled no different. Although it loomed on the horizon as a bright opportunity, Reddick’s 25th-place finish pushed him further backward. He finished one point above Kyle Larson just like the regular season’s final run – except that this time both were in deep waters.

Reddick now enters a two-week tricky stretch with Talladega right up on his face. And his points do not paint a nice picture – the 23XI champ has dropped 4 points below the cut line. “I guess for me it comes to just performance,” Reddick said post-race at Kansas. “For a month straight, we haven’t been that great, but we have two weeks to figure it out.” He expanded further on the crucial restart at Kansas: “When you have really good cars you can make incredible moves on restarts and when things aren’t just going the way you want them to inside the race car it’s really easy to have a big mistake and that’s what ultimately cost us our finish.”

It is evident that both Larson and Reddick have been experiencing bad luck. Unless they come up with a superb strategy to tackle Talladega, their championship runs may be at stake.