For many teams and drivers not regarded as top-tier, Sunday's Talladega race represents the greatest opportunity to qualify for the 2017 playoffs.

It's well-documented how unusual NASCAR's largest track is to the competitors. The restricted horsepower takes an important element away from drivers: the need to lift off the accelerator entering the turns.

On the surface this suggests driving Talladega is less difficult than the conventional tracks, but truth be told, it's not!

Winning Talladega requires a greater deal of processing skill -- assessing the speed in your car, anticipating which lane has the momentum, positioning your car alongside another car to stall theirs while yours gains steam.

When drivers describe how mentally exhausting an event can be, they're referring to the glut of information they must absorb while piloting the car. There is a real chess element because every decision carries potential consequences regarding the next move.

It's information overload at 200 mph.

What's most interesting about driving at Talladega is the roller-coaster of emotions drivers can experience many, many times during the three-hour event. It can be the most exciting or most discouraging experience behind the wheel, and all in the same lap!

Drivers can surgically maneuver their way to the lead, feel as though they have an upper hand in navigating traffic, and find themselves drifting backward after one failed decision as though they're pulling a parachute that didn't exist a few seconds earlier.

Never has 3 or 4 mph felt so expensive as it does after getting squeezed out of the draft by one of your 39 adversaries.

On the other hand, timing a lane change to perfection yields a boost that increases the engine's rpm by a scant 1 or 2 percent. That sounds insignificant but actually yields an enormous positive effect. You now have the 3 or 4 mph in your favor.

The reason we have surprise winners is in large part a result of so few drivers embracing this form of racing, at least the same way they embrace competing at Texas, Bristol or Richmond.

Competing at the 2.66-mile track comes with a vulnerability that most drivers are aware of because they experienced being upside down at the track.

Elevated risk is something they carry into Alabama in the back of their mind. It's not so much the danger but the awareness that you control so little of your destiny here.

It's also difficult to know how to win Talladega without having orchestrated it before.

Most of the 188 laps are simply a rehearsal for connecting a perfect couple of laps when it matters most: the end.

There are predominantly two types of drivers at Talladega -- those who are careful and those bordering on careless. Careful drivers seldom win, but those racing assertive all day establish themselves as fast, and as the laps wind down their odds of winning increase primarily because other drivers see them as good to team with, potentially increasing their own chances.

Some -- Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Brad Keselowski being two -- are masters of this form of racing.

They compete with authority all race long, they exhibit a sixth sense of the wind's effects on the car; they change lanes instinctively, spending as much time looking in the rearview mirror playing defense as they do driving offensively through the front windshield.

The commonality of the underdog pulling off the upset gives the race a greater value for everyone involved. Sometimes at Talladega, young drivers benefit most from what they don't know, like how violent a crash can be at the enormous facility.

There is no question about it: Talladega is like no other place you compete, not even Daytona -- the other restrictor-plate track in NASCAR. Talladega is so wide that it can encourage more risk-taking, and its speed is seldom apparent until a driver is sliding out of control.

I'm going to share one final thing about Talladega: I'm really looking forward to this weekend's race! That's something few people heard me say during my driving days.

This racetrack was created with fans in mind, not drivers. The craziness associated with a race here favors the handful of drivers who have unlocked the restrictor-plate recipe for success. It tilts in favor of the bold, and the desperate, and it often punishes those stuck somewhere in the middle simply trying to get to the end.

Bottom line, you need to buy into this madness the moment you drive through the tunnel. Trying to outsmart or out-logic the track is near impossible. The track and restrictor plates have no regard for logic.

Most of my driving career was predicated on common sense and logic; study the track, understand how and why it's changing, manage tires, etc.

Nothing more I say could be more profound than this: I never won a Talladega race!