There doesn't seem to be a clearly defined way to race at Talladega. Should drivers risk running toward the front in an attempt to stay ahead of the "Big One?"
Or should they drop to the rear and hang in the back to try and avoid the mayhem up front?
On Friday, several Chase drivers (including the top three drivers in points) were asked about their strategies.
Matt Kenseth:
A lot of it depends on where you qualify and what the race feels like once you get going. Really, I think from the beginning of the year to right now the racing has changed drastically overall with the cautions. We used to get a
lot of debris cautions and other cautions that bunched up a lot of restarts and a lot of green-white-checkers, but lately we haven't had that. Even at the end of Martinsville there were cars blowing up and trying to get to pit road and we kept racing all the way to the end.I think you need to keep that in mind and think about that here. It's happened before here, and even though I don't think it will, but you could go flag to flag without having a caution. You need to keep the draft the whole time and not lose that front draft, so I think I'm just gonna go race and see what happens from there.
Kevin Harvick:
A lot of it is going to depend on (practice) and how we think our car is performing; how we feel like our car is pushing people and how we feel like we get pushed. And then the second thing that will dictate that is qualifying. So we really won't have a firm decision on how we will race until Saturday afternoon and Gil (Martin, crew chief) and I will sit down and decide on how we want to approach the race. How we approached it last time (in the spring, when Harvick won), we may approach it that way or we may not. It just depends on the performance of the race car and where we qualify.
Jimmie Johnson:
For me, Chad (Knaus, crew chief) and I have a great strategy in mind, we know what we are going to do and we will get out there and race. At the end of the day, you have to race here for a finish and we need to make sure we race at the right time and with the right cars.
Denny Hamlin:
I think you'll see a little bit of both from myself. I think you'll see me up front for part of the day trying to lead a lap, for one. Then you'll see times where I'm in the back.
I'm just going to try to get a feel for how the race is going and you could even sense it in practice – the more intense moments of practice than others. I would immediately pull back and get out of the pack because I could feel the intensity keep rising.
Usually us drivers, we don't pull back the reins until something bad does happen. I'm sure we will continue to test those waters in the race until there is a big wreck and then you'll see it calm down and then you'll see it pick back up at the end.
Clint Bowyer:
In the spring race, Kevin (Harvick) and I were back there riding around and we each had a lap where we thought we could get to the front. His was 50 and mine was 30 and I just waited too long. He went up and won the race and I don't even know where I finished. But we got up there; we just didn't get up there far enough. I wasn't in position when I needed to be.
Kyle Busch:
You gotta think about a lot of things. You gotta think about how you work with other guys, you think about how well your car is working with the other guys in that particular day. You look around you and see what guys, for instance, don't like each other. Whether they're together. How they're working together. Are they dumping each other off all the time? What goes on there?
There's always a lot of things that you look at and watch. You're always kind of keeping your eye out and watching and taking everything in. When you see stuff kind getting crazy and you see guys that don't like each other and are bump-drafting each other and they're getting squirrely or whatever, I tend to fall out. I'll go back and let things sort out. The order will change and then you'll try to work your way back up through there.
I did a couple times in the spring. I was up front leading for a while and I got shuffled out, got back to 15th, was gonna stay there and work my way back up, but I saw things getting a little crazy, three-wide, a little bit four-wide, so I went to the back.
I always press the reset button. I'll re-group, start over and come back up to the front. The other guys, they're not pressing the reset button at the same time I am, so it's not like you start over. At least I reset a little bit and think about what's going on, think about where we are in the race, what tires I'm on. I don't know what tires anybody else is on unless my guys relay that information to me or fuel mileage, where that's at. It can all be so complicated, there's so many different things running through your head.