TALLADEGA, Ala. >> NASCAR is back in action following its only weekend off of the 38-race schedule with a Sunday showdown at Talladega Superspeedway, where the drivers will try to halt the early domination shown by Christopher Bell, Denny Hamlin and Kyle Larson.

The trio arrived at the Alabama track with seven combined victories through the first nine races. Bell reeled off three consecutive wins in the first month of the season, then Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Hamlin won two in a row. Larson has won two of the last four Cup Series outings, including a victory at Bristol Motor Speedway, the last race before the Easter break.

Larson hasn’t slowed down — he did two days of Indianapolis 500 testing earlier this week and then won a World of Outlaws race in Florida on Friday night — but he’s not sure he’s bringing any momentum into the race.

“It’s just a normal-ish week for me, sitting in a race car every day,” Larson said Saturday. “I race so often that a week of racing can make the week before feel like a long time ago.”

He’s definitely on roll, which would be trouble for the rest of the field if Larson didn’t loathe superspeedway racing. His third-place finish at Atlanta in the second race this season is his career best on a superspeedway. He’s twice finished fourth at Talladega, and has never cracked the top-10 at Daytona.

“I enjoy coming here because the crowd is into it here,” Larson said. “I don’t enjoy the racing, honestly. I don’t know if many people do. I come to these tracks, we haven’t finished well the majority of the time.”

It’s been nine consecutive different winners at Talladega — the longest streak in the history of the 2.66-mile track — which hasn’t had the same driver in victory lane back-to-back since Ryan Blaney in 2019-20. Since then, the races have been won by Hamlin, Brad Keselowski, Bubba Wallace, Ross Chastain, Chase Elliott, Kyle Busch, Blaney, Tyler Reddick and Ricky Stenhouse Jr.

The style of racing at Atlanta, Daytona and Talladega, where the 40-car field runs in a pack and drivers must draft off one another to slice through traffic, has many believing luck plays a role in deciding the race winner.

Last year’s playoff race at Talladega featured the biggest crash in NASCAR history when 28 cars were part of a demolition derby with four laps left in regulation. Stenhouse won in overtime.

“Luck is more important now, certainly, than it has ever been in history,” Hamlin said. “But it’s always had a role. It is just that the (percentage) numbers have grown.”

Zane Smith continued the qualifying dominance shown the last two years at drafting tracks by winning the pole for Talladega. It is the first career pole for the second-year Cup Series driver.

Smith turned a lap of 182.174 mph in a Ford to bump Busch in a Chevrolet and Joey Logano in a Ford. Ty Gibbs was the fastest Toyota driver and qualified 10th.

Smith’s pole-winning run marked the third consecutive pole at Talladega for Front Row: Michael McDowell, who now drives for Spire Motorsports, swept the pole in both races last year.