Joe Gibbs Racing shows why being conservative works in the Chase

Maybe Talladega was the “lay up” race of the third round?

Joe Gibbs Racing’s four cars represent half of the eight drivers advancing to the third round of the Chase. And three of those JGR drivers played a survive and advance strategy to perfection Sunday.

Kyle Busch, Carl Edwards and Matt Kenseth entered Sunday’s race with hefty points advantages over ninth place. Kenseth was up 29 points on ninth, Busch 27 and Edwards 24. With one point being awarded per position, each of the three knew that it would take a big points swing to get knocked out of the Chase.

The easiest way to be a part of a big points swing at Talladega? Get involved in a crash. So the three teammates ran behind the main pack of cars for the entirety of the day. Kenseth finished 28th, Edwards was 29th and Busch was 30th.

The strategy to run at the back for most of the race at Talladega isn’t uncommon. Every race features at least a handful of drivers content to ride in the back for 400 of the first 500 miles to avoid any possible pileups. Then, as the laps wind down, it’s time to move to the front.

But with engine woes striking both Martin Truex Jr. and Brad Keselowski, there was little need for the three Gibbs cars to try to pass a bunch of cars in the waning laps of Sunday’s race. The equipment failures had taken Truex Jr. and Keselowski out of contention for the third round. All Busch, Kenseth and Edwards had to do was make sure they avoided a catastrophic finish.

“It goes against everything you ever want to do as a race car driver,” Kenseth said. “You want to go try to win races, so I think it’s just kind of an unintended consequence of the way – being the cutoff race and the way the Chase works. You can’t afford to go up there and get wrecked and not have a chance to race for a championship, so it was just kind of the cards we were dealt and we had to play them.”

Keselowski said entering last week’s race at Kansas that it could be the “lay up” race of the second round. The first race of the round at Charlotte saw five Chase drivers have issues and the tip seven had a lead of 19 points or more on the bottom five.

The theory made sense; teams could be exceptionally cautious at Kansas to keep that cushion at Talladega in case of an accident. Busch, Edwards and Kenseth all finished in the top 10 last week, further padding their points advantages. The good finishes meant the teams could afford even more to race in the name wreck avoidance on Sunday.

When NASCAR redesigned the Chase format before the 2014 season, it tried to put a bigger emphasis on winning, hoping to force teams to be aggressive and go for wins in the new elimination-style Chase. Heck, NASCAR CEO Brian France even said before the changes were made that the sanctioning body didn’t have the right balance in its point system and wanted the series to incentivize winning.

Instead, it’s clear that NASCAR has incentivized playing it safe, especially in the first two rounds of the Chase as the field whittles from 16 to 12 to eight. If the points system truly awarded good finishes and aggressive racing, it wouldn’t have benefited Busch, Edwards and Kenseth nearly as much to do what they did.

And what they did shouldn’t be criticized in the slightest, either. There’s no right answer when it comes to a winning strategy at Talladega. A wreck could take you out at any time from any spot in the pack.

But the three knew they didn’t have to win on Sunday. So why risk a really bad finish when you don’t need a really good finish and the points reset after the race? Isn’t the ultimate goal of the Chase to win the title instead of simply a race in the second round?

““It’s frustrating, but to have a dull day today it’s certainly going to make for a heck of a lot more exciting days down the road,” Busch said. “You have to look at it as you have to take the good with the bad sometimes, no different in that sort of scenario. Today was one of those having to ride around bad type days, but the reward is being able to race on and go into the next round and have a chance to race for another championship.”

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Nick Bromberg is the editor of From The Marbles on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at nickbromberg@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!

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