Gluck: Talladega strategy comes down to comfort zone

TALLADEGA, Ala. — Carl Edwards enters Sunday’s playoff elimination race at Talladega Superspeedway with a very comfortable 24-point lead over the cutoff spot. So the only way Edwards can possibly miss the next round of the Chase for the Sprint Cup is if disaster strikes.

That could mean a mechanical failure, which Edwards can’t control. Or it could mean getting caught up in a big crash, which is obviously more likely at Talladega than most other tracks.

So why wouldn’t Edwards just drop to the back and ride around in order to avoid a wreck?

“Because I have wrecked racing up front, I’ve wrecked in the back and I’ve wrecked in the middle, and I can tell you it just feels better to be up front,” Edwards said. “You can’t make a plan that is foolproof here and I know that every one of us is built to race. We build these race cars (to be) as fast as we can and we definitely don’t want to get wrecked riding around in the back, so we just want to stay up front all day.”

Watch: Memorable wrecks at Talladega Superspeedway

It makes sense on some levels, especially when considering what happened to Kyle Busch in 2014. That year, Busch came into Talladega with a 26-point lead over the cutoff spot and chose to ride around in the back in order to avoid trouble.

But when a crash occurred and Busch slowed down, he was plowed into from behind by Austin Dillon. Busch had a DNF and missed the next round.

So yes, it is possible for something bad to happen while running in the back. Still, isn’t that more of a fluke than anything?

Drivers don’t think so.

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“The closer you are to the front, the better your odds are of getting through a wreck if it happens,” Martin Truex Jr. said. “Typically middle of the pack is where you don’t want to be, but we’ve seen guys get run over in the back.

“I’ve been crashed riding around in the back trying to stay out of trouble like Kyle had happen to him a few years ago, so I think there just comes a point where you just say, ‘To heck with it. We’re just going to go race and hope for the best.’”

In addition, it’s not in drivers’ nature to play it safe. It sounds good to talk about it, but just look at Brad Keselowski last week at Kansas.

Before the Kansas race, Keselowski spoke about the benefits of “taking a log off the fire” and “laying up,” but then he crashed while making a not-so-conservative move. Afterward, he said it was because “I don’t want to race (conservatively)” even if was “probably the smart thing to do.”

That’s the dilemma for drivers: They didn’t get to this point in their lives and careers by doing the safe thing and avoiding dicey situations. At the same time, though, the Chase seems to require it — at least in the early rounds.

“It’s not in their DNA,” Tony Stewart said. “It’s hard to get yourself to do that, because when you get in that race car, you want to lead laps and win the race.”

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Stewart, though, doesn’t share that mentality. He’s one of the regulars who rides at the back of the field at Talladega and waits for everyone else to crash. When it’s a three-hour race, he said, what happens in the first two hours “doesn’t mean anything.”

“You have guys from the drop of the green flag who will absolutely beat their brains out trying to get to the front and stay in front all day,” Stewart said. “It’s just different approaches, but I like my record there (14 top 10s in 34 races). I’d like to think my strategy worked for me.”

But it’s not going to work for everyone, especially drivers who would rather take their chances of trying to get a win. It’s no fun to use the survive-and-advance mentality at a place like Talladega — in part because it’s boring for them, and the adrenaline overcomes logic.

Chase nuggets: Who will escape Talladega chaos?

That might include Matt Kenseth (+29 points), Kyle Busch (+27), Edwards and Kurt Busch (+17). They'll all play the strategy that feels right for them, even if it doesn't turn out to be correct in the end.

And most of them, it seems, might take their chances up front.

“The last time I checked, this thing is called a race,” Joey Logano said. “And I believe racers race.”

Follow Gluck on Twitter @jeff_gluck