NBC Sports’ Nate Ryan gives his fast takes heading into Sunday’s race  at Talladega Superspeedway (2 p.m. ET on NBC, NBC Sports App, MRN Radio and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio):

Control seems counterintuitive in the random environs of Talladega, where a bobbled wheel or a misjudged gap can clean out two dozen cars in a blink.

Consider how relatively capricious recent results have seemed at the 2.66-mile oval, especially since the 2022 debut of the Next Gen car.

There has been no repeat winner in the past eight races, tying the longest streak of different winners at Talladega (per Racing Insights). In the past five races, the polesitter has a best finish of 17th, and it’s been four years since a race winner started higher than 10th. The past three races have featured a Toyota, a Ford and a Chevrolet in Victory Lane.

But while the action might seem as arbitrary as at any point in the track’s 55-year history, the Next Gen has added a wrinkle of autonomy at Talladega.

As the single-lug nut era made it possible to change four tires in less time than to top off a gas tank, the strategic focus shifted to fuel economy at superspeedways, with a goal of winning every pit cycle by gaining positions on a shorter stop.

Tyler Reddick, who won the April 20 race at Talladega, said a byproduct of those tactics has been enhanced maneuverability from a varying degree of throttle usage throughout the field.

Going forward or backward is as easy as modulating the accelerator.

“I don’t love the thought of all the fuel saving,” Reddick said. “But as a driver, it is completely in your hands in the first half of those stages. You’re able to go right to the back. You’re able to go right to the front. It’s totally in your control.

“If we were all saving zero fuel, we would just run side by side, two by two for the entire race, and I don’t think we’d see a lot of movement. So I don’t love running half throttle, but it’s in the driver and team’s hands to make the most of it and use some sort of strategy to get to the front.”

RELATED: Talladega schedule | Playoff standings

Playoff drivers such as Reddick will want to be at the front at the end of the first two stages Sunday. With Ross Chastain having won at Kansas Speedway, no one has locked into the third round, and Reddick was among only three playoff drivers who finished in the top 10 in April at Talladega (the others were Alex Bowman in fifth and William Byron in seventh — also the top two finishers in this year’s Daytona 500).

After Denny Hamlin illustrated the risk of eschewing stage points in favor of hanging back at Atlanta Motor Speedway, sandbagging would seem highly unlikely Sunday for any championship contender — particularly when others’ emphasis on fuel conservation will open avenues to the front.

Two more reasons it would be stunning to see Hamlin revisit his Atlanta plan: 1) Joe Gibbs Racing has yet to win on a drafting track with the Next Gen and 2) JGR’s foursome posted a best finish of 11th the last time at Talladega.

With only two top 10s in nine starts at Talladega (despite two pole positions), JGR’s Christopher Bell said biding time would be unappealing Sunday.

“You just never know how it’s going to go,” Bell said. “Normally I would say just finishing the race is most important, but the last couple times the fall Talladega race hasn’t really had much crashing, and if that’s the case, you’re not going to score very many points.”

An ill-timed slump:

Though he leads the series with 19 top 10s, Reddick has only two in the past six races, and the regular-season champion’s No. 45 Toyota team has been unable to identify why his performance has suffered.

“Definitely concerned,” said Reddick, who qualified fourth at Kansas but finished 25th because of erratic handling. “What got us to winning the Regular Season Championship is car performance. We’ve just been lacking performance and a good handling car, so yeah, at this point, it’s definitely a head-scratcher. Coming off of the regular season. I felt no emphasis to change what I was doing. I don’t think anyone on this team has, either. We just haven’t been putting together good races, haven’t had speed and haven’t been able to get stage points. It’s been tough.”

The 23XI Racing star, who is four points below the elimination line, could be just the latest example of why staying on top in NASCAR is so tricky. There’s a long history of points leaders who understandably are reluctant to adjust their setups while running well — making them prime targets for being leap-frogged by rivals who hit on a new advantage through their willingness to try anything in the hunt for more speed.

Your drafting darling

In five drafting races this season, Austin Cindric has two top 10s but somehow leads the series in points (181) and laps led (168) across Daytona, Talladega and Atlanta. The Team Penske driver has mastered stage racing at those tracks with two wins and three seconds.

“The one thing that we’ve had at all of those tracks is speed,” said Cindric, who was 23rd at Talladega in April but earned 33 points with a first and second in the stages. “That certainly makes my job easier.”

His team deserves credit for strategic execution (a Penske hallmark) and qualifying (the No. 2 Ford has consecutive top-10 starts at the track where car preparation means everything in the speed of a solitary lap).

But since winning the 2022 Daytona 500, Cindric has shown a calculating shrewdness for positioning and timing on drafting tracks. He said that often comes down to realizing the long-term benefit of staying put and consequently resisting the urge to make a pass at the expense of losing drafting help.

“It’s just kind of recognizing what role do you have within the pack,” he said. “You don’t necessarily have as many options to move forward. Are you able to advance yourself forward or the row? I think knowing your role and where you exist on track is probably more important than it has ever been.”

 

House of horrors

Mired in a stretch of 14 consecutive races without a top 10 on drafting tracks (the longest in Cup, per Racing Insights), Kyle Larson faces the daunting prospect of rebounding from his 30th at Kansas.

Talladega is statistically the worst track on the schedule for the 2021 Cup Series champion, whose average finish is 22.84. Zooming out gets even worse for Larson, who has one top 10 in his past 20 drafting races while failing to finish 11 times.

But he has stayed upbeat about his chances Sunday — and the case for optimism actually is well-founded. The Hendrick Motorsports driver has scored points in both stages of three of the past five races at Talladega and has led in four of the past six. His teammates will bring the experience of two Talladega wins and a 1-2 finish at this year’s Daytona 500.

That’s why a Larson victory at Talladega would feel more like a breakthrough than a bolt from the blue.

No backing down

Kyle Busch immediately absolved Chase Briscoe of any fault for the spin at Kansas that ensured the two-time Cup Series champion’s winless streak would be extended to 51 races.

But even a lingering sense of blame would have had little impact on Briscoe, whose penchant for moving on from mistakes is as strong as any young driver in Cup. Busch’s streak of 19 consecutive seasons with a victory remains intact in part because Briscoe took out Reddick on the last lap of the Bristol Dirt Race in 2022 — a move the Stewart-Haas Racing driver has said he would have made again.

Rarely burdened by inhibitions, Briscoe said “having a short memory” again will be the mantra of his go-for-broke approach at Talladega.

“I’ve went through different kind of spectrums of superspeedway racing from conservative to super aggressive,” he said. “Every time I’ve went the conservative route, I crash. So I’m just going with the mindset of being aggressive and trying to lead every lap and make every move I can and hopefully stay out of the chaos.”

Nate Ryan has written about NASCAR since 1996 while working at the San Bernardino Sun, Richmond Times-Dispatch, USA TODAY and for the past 10 years at NBC Sports Digital. He is the host of the NASCAR on NBC Podcast and also has covered various other motorsports, including the IndyCar and IMSA series.