Play it safe? For Martin Truex Jr., Joey Logano, that Talladega idea won't fly

Ray Slover

Play it safe? For Martin Truex Jr., Joey Logano, that Talladega idea won't fly image

Want chaos at Talladega? You'll get it this weekend, but the track's spring Sprint Cup race is wilder.

So says Joey Logano. And Martin Truex Jr. agrees. That might be a surprise, given what's at stake this weekend.

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Sunday's Hellmann's 500 begins about 2:30 p.m. ET, and it is the critical third and final race in the Chase for the Sprint Cup's Round of 12. Four drivers will be eliminated from the championship series. Logano and Truex could be among them.

"You never know what you're going to get until the race starts," said Truex, who enters the race 13 points ahead of Logano. "It does seem like the spring race is always more guys pushing, a lot more people willing to stay in front in that really big pack and less people riding in the back trying to be safe. This race, you never know.

"The scary part is that if it is a calm race, then everybody is around at the end and everybody is panicking trying to get to the front in the last five or 10 laps, that's usually when you have the really, really big wreck."

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Logano is the man on the bubble, holding the last transfer position to the Round of 8. His grasp is even more tenuous because he is tied in points with Austin Dillon, holding eighth by virtue of his better finish as Kansas.

No worries.

"I don't really think about how people are trying to knock me out," Logano told media members on Friday. "I think about how I'm going to knock other people out.

"That's my attitude. If I'm on defense, we're not going to win. We better stay on offense. That's what this 22 team does. We're going go out there and race hard because that's what we know how to do when we come to speedways."

Fair enough. Really, only two drivers know they will compete in the Round of 8. Jimmie Johnson won at Charlotte to secure his transfer position. Kevin Harvick won at Kansas. The other half-dozen in the octet might have points advantages going in, but the only thing that matters is Sunday's results.

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Remember: In 2014, Kyle Busch arrived at Talladega second in points. He had had five consecutive top 10 finishes. An early crash left him in 40th place (there were 43 cars in the field at the time). Boom, Busch's Chase was over.

Think Matt Kenseth isn't aware of that? He is Busch's teammate for Joe Gibbs Racing. Kenseth's Chase ended at Talladega last year a race after he got spun out by Logano at Kansas.

Kenseth started fourth last fall; he finished 26th.

Logano has a simple plan this weekend.

"We're going to go out there and race hard and try to stay up front," he said, "try to keep making our car better for the end of the race and be there at the end."

With four-time Talladega winner Brad Keselowski as his teammate, Logano faces positives and negatives. The drivers will work together, sure. However, Keselowski must win to advance in the Chase. Logano must at least finish ahead of Dillon, Denny Hamlin and Chase Elliott. And if Keselowski wins, he must finish well ahead of Truex.

"My approach really is that hopefully we'll qualify in a decent position and get up toward the front early and be able to stay there," Truex said. "That's your best opportunity. There's no telling what can happen here. You just have to go race hard and hopefully a little luck is on your side and you can stay near the front. That's the most important thing."

Luck? Forget about it.

"It's all skill and preparation," Logano said, "100 percent in my opinion."

Really?

"You create your own luck," he said. "There might be a chance you run over something or something happens, but some things are just meant to be and some things aren't. But if you can work and do everything you can do and prepare yourself to go out there and be the best, then that's all you can do. I feel like that makes it, in my opinion, a lot about preparation."

Good luck with that.

Ray Slover