Talladega strategies range as wide as the track itself

TALLADEGA, Ala. -- If you ask drivers the secret to success at Talladega Superspeedway, the answers are as varied as the number of choices. To avoid the inevitable multi-car accident, should you run at the front, the middle or the back? Stay high, keep low or run in the middle?

But every driver this weekend seems to agree on one thing: there will be a point near the end of Sunday's Amp Energy 500 (1 p.m. ET, ABC) when the intensity level increases exponentially, and it's time to show what you've got.

Until then, Greg Biffle said it's hurry up and wait -- at close to 200 mph.

"Depending on where I'm at, I may try and run in the front," Biffle said. "If it gets a little hairy in the middle, I may try and get out of that group a little bit, but at some point I'm going to make a run to the front prior to the end. I'm going to run up through the draft, but it's a risk you take because I've got to find out how my car handles and I've got to find out where I can go and where I can pass at."

Biffle said that might come somewhere in the middle of the race, but even then, it doesn't necessarily give a driver a clear picture of what he might be able to do later on.

"I will try and push the issue and try to get to the front at least once, to see what I can do," he said. "[However,] it's almost a false sense of security because at that point, if you're pushing the issue, you pass a guy and stick your nose inside of him he's gonna be like, 'Go ahead. Let that idiot go right now. It's only the middle part of the race and he's going like crazy.'

"So when it comes down to 20 to go, that guy may not give you that room anymore that he gave you at 300 miles. It's gonna be a waiting game."

Kyle Busch said it takes a patient driver to hang out at the tail end of the field until the last green-flag segment.

"You can try to go and ride in the back, but you've got to have enough patience and enough self-determination to be back there the whole time," Busch said.

But for Kasey Kahne, patience is not a virtue.

"I don't think that you can be patient," Kahne said. "If you have an open hole, you take it. If you don't, then you can't force it and try to make something that isn't there for you unless you want to cause a wreck."

Like Biffle, Busch likes to switch lanes and see how his car works in traffic.

"There's so many different scenarios to try to play here," Busch said. "If you say you're going to stay on the bottom the whole time then that ain't going to work. If you say you're going to stay on the top the whole time, that's not going to work."

And what are those last 20 laps like?

"A lot of blocking and you're trying to be in the right lane," Kahne said. "You're always trying not to let somebody get you out of line and push you back. It's intense -- really intense."

So what strategy works best? Busch said that won't be determined until the winner crosses the finish line on Sunday afternoon.

"It always changes all around, people's strategies throughout the race here," Busch said. "You never know what's going to happen."

Video
• Biffle: A lot can happen here

Speeds
• 'Dega: Practice 1 | Practice 2