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NASCAR America: Landon Cassill thinks he knows how to avoid the ‘Big One’

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It's not a question of if there will be a big wreck at Talladega Superspeedway, but when, making planning for it an important part of a driver's preparation.

It is natural to consider one’s involvement in a multi-car accident at Talladega SuperSpeedway as simple bad luck when a driver did not cause the incident, but over the course of his career, Landon Cassill learned it is not that simple.

“My first few races at Talladega in the Cup series, I got caught up in the ‘Big One’ over and over again,” Cassill said. “And you heard Kyle Busch say it’s a crapshoot and it’s kind of easy to leave after getting wrecked in the ‘Big One’ and say ‘it wasn’t my fault. I didn’t cause it; I was just collected and we’ll try again next time.’ And I looked back at the wrecks I was involved in and I started watching film and I thought I can create a strategy to get me out of these things.

It is the driver’s job to protect his equipment even when circumstances are out of his control.

“So, I started running a different line. I started favoring the bottom of the racetrack. I felt when the wrecks happened, they move up before they move back down and it started to help me.”

On Wednesday’s edition of NASCAR America, Dale Earnhardt Jr. described what it takes to get to the lead and win at Talladega.

But an equally important part of the equation is how to position a car so that it does not sustain damage, and Cassill describes how that is done.

“I’m kind of on the back of the screen running the middle lane and there’s a gap at the bottom,” Cassill said. “I moved down to the bottom intentionally really to protect myself and it was just perfect timing because there is a wreck right here. Chase Elliott gets turned and you can see my car again. I’ve got lots of race track underneath me; lots of pavement to slow myself down. And now, I’m dodging racecars going 100 miles per hour, not 200 miles per hour. It’s a lot easier to drive through the wreck that way.

For more, watch the above video.