Dave Martin / AP file

Dale Earnhardt Jr. has celebrated four wins at Talladega Superspeedway, and he's the driver to beat at the Alabama track in Sunday's Nextel Cup race, says Benny Parsons of NBCSports.com.

The third race in NASCAR's Chase for the Championship is Sunday at Talladega (Ala.) Superspeedway, where the dominance displayed by Dale Earnhardt Jr. the past few years makes him the favorite to win for a fifth time on the longest track on the Nextel Cup circuit.

Working in
Junior's favor
Junior's 8.0 average finish at Talladega is the best among all drivers with more than five starts at the superspeedway.

He's going for his eighth straight top-10 finish at this super fast tri-oval, where he ran off a string of four wins in a row from the fall race in 2001 to the spring race last year.

And in the fall of last year and the spring of this year, he's come home the runner-up at Talladega.

Beating Junior at this venue is one tall order, and after placing ninth at Dover a week ago and dropping from first to third in the Chase points race, he wants nothing more than a trip to Victory Lane on Sunday.

Other drivers to watch
The likely top threat to Junior winning at Talladega is Michael Waltrip, his teammate at Dale Earnhardt Inc., an operation that takes the bragging rights when it comes to being the dominant force in restrictor plate racing.

Waltrip, who is 16th in points, did not qualify for the Chase, but he is the defending champion of this race.

He's was 12th at Talladega this spring, and he has three-top results in his last five races at this superspeedway.

Figure on Jeff Gordon's No. 24 Chevrolet to be fast.

The four-time Cup champion won this spring's race at Talladega, his second superspeedway win of the year as he also bested the field in the July race at Daytona.

Gordon has three wins, ten top-fives and 11 top 10s in 23 career starts at Talladega.

Gordon finished third last weekend at Dover, and that boosted him from third to first in the Chase standings.

He's had top-10 finishes in his last three races and is bidding for his fourth straight top-10 result at Talladega.

Gordon has led in 18 of his 23 races at the Alabama track.

I can see Mark Martin being in the thick of the battle to take the checkered flag. 

Martin has stepped up his overall performance of late, and by taking second at Dover last Sunday, the veteran rose from seventh to fifth in the Chase standings.

Throw out his engine problem in last February's Daytona 500, and Martin has been a factor on the superspeedways this season, placing sixth at Talladega in the spring and sixth at Daytona in July.

Martin has two wins and 21 top-10 finishes in 37 career starts at Talladega.

After a fifth-place result at Dover, Kurt Busch is only one point back of first-place Jeff Gordon in the Chase point tally.

Busch was sixth in this race last fall, and the Roush racer has run seven races at Talladega, posting four top-10 finishes.

He's in a groove being the only driver to chalk up top-five finishes in the first two Chase races.

Jimmie Johnson posted his best Talladega finish this spring, placing fourth -- for his second top-10 result in five career starts at the superspeedway.

Ryan Newman, who comes off an impressive win last week at Dover, took 11th in the spring at Talladega, and fourth in this race in 2003.

Like Waltrip, Kevin Harvick is not in the Chase, but he looked strong in taking third in the spring at Talladega, and he'll bring the same car back to Alabama to take another run at a win.

For the second week in a row, Ricky Rudd is my darkhorse.

He is running better than his results show, but he did place 12th last week at Dover.

Keys to success at Talladega
Talladega is big, wide and fast, a track that places a premium on a quality car.

It has a lot of grip on it and cars run in large packs.

That makes it mentally draining on the drivers, who need to focus on all that is going on around them so they can try and stay out of big wrecks.

Getting caught up in the "Big One" is the fear of all drivers, and the best way for a driver to lessen the odds of being involved in such a multi-car pileup is to try and run up front all day.

While trying their best to keep their cars from getting damaged, the drivers are also trying to figure out when it's best to make their moves, so it's like a game of mental chess.

Luck plays a big role at this track, more so than at any other track on the Nextel Cup circuit.

Drivers must be careful not to speed on pit row after coming in from running at about 190 mph on the track.

The racing will intensify over the final 20 laps or so and that's when some of the more desperate moves are made -- moves that often result in wrecks.

Getting through clean in the late stages of the race is one of the biggest challenges of racing at Talladega.