Setting aside the Tony Stewart "will he stay or will he go" saga for a moment, in case it's escaped anyone's attention this weekend features the Cupsters and claims jumpers at Talladega while the trucker play opening act to Danica and Who Are Those Other Guys Anyway at Kansas.

Talladega is the quintessential southern track, a place where the sacred and profane ride shotgun for each other.  There are few thrills in racing quite like a forty car pack thundering off a turn three wide, separated on all sides from each other by naught but a few air molecules that themselves are gasping for breathing room.  The slicing and dicing required to advance in such a situation, strategic alliances instantly formed and just as quickly dissolved as each driver seeks that which will propel them forward without disappearing into the back even faster than they reached the front, makes for a race that fuses chess and poker into one single calculating daredevil whole.  Little wonder so many love it.

There's equally little wonder why so many loathe it.  The pack's highlight is also its horror, for all know that one wrong move, one blown tire, one part failure, one sneeze can and will result in a vicious implementation of near irresistible forces meeting very movable objects.  The end result is instantaneous creation of a very large used up car lot.  This is not racing as most of us know it.

Talladega is its own entity, a track where the temporary city gathered on the infield defines living the dream as living the party yet bows in reverent silence for the pre-race prayer.  Once the Alabama Gang's home track, it is now Mecca for the Junior Nation gathered in anticipation of seeing their favorite son triumph.  Whether the corresponding venom formerly thrown along with assorted adult beverage containers at Jeff Gordon will continue now that he and Dale Jr. have their paychecks signed by the same hand remains to be seen.  It also remains to be seen whether this weekend's race results will put an end to the occasional e-mail messages currently being received by Earnhardt Jr. reading "got trophy?" followed by several laughing emoticons and signed "DP."

Favorites?  Gordon, Earnhardt, Johnson.  Stewart has to win here sooner or later.  There's also the omnipresent Kyle Busch, who stands a good chance of either winning or causing the aforementioned very large used up car lot.  Possibly both simultaneously.  Reckless abandon is seldom wreckless.

It would behoove NASCAR to put on the best show possible this weekend.  The IRL stole a huge chunk of its thunder last weekend, and interest in the Kansas race which formerly was tepid is now torrential.  Given how such tracks far more often than not produce open wheel two in one finishes where oh-wow and razor-thin merrily skip hand in hand through the sunflower fields, the last thing NASCAR needs is a mess or any kind of situation requiring an official's call answerable by cries of favoritism or what have you.  Which probably guarantees it'll happen.  Ah well.

Enjoy the weekend, everyone.