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RICHMOND, Va. -- Carl Edwards met with NASCAR officials Thursday to discuss his Talladega crash and fellow drivers offered their opinion Friday on what could be done to try to prevent another car from soaring into the catchfence.

Edwards was joined by car owner Jack Roush at the meeting in Daytona Beach, Fla.

"I learned a lot," Edwards said Friday at Richmond International Raceway. "They learned a little bit about me and the driver's perspective. The bottom line is unless you take the banking out of that race track or we don't go race there, you've got this big problem trying to keep the cars apart, keep them slow and that's the battle."

Jeff Burton has a suggestion but he knows drivers won't like it. Officials can make the cars handle so poorly that drivers can't race together. Or let NASCAR penalize drivers for aggressive driving.

"If you cause a wreck, (they would) penalize you," Burton said. "That's a terrible thing because if you're sitting in a race car, you know what happened. If you're watching it, you may not know."

POLE RUN: Brian Vickers won his second pole of the season, topping the field with a lap of 127.131 mph. Jeff Gordon will also start on the front row after a lap of 126.844 mph.

AILING BACK: Jeff Gordon said he had an MRI on his back this week to discover the root of his pain.

"I don't believe it's anything serious," Gordon said. "There's a little bit of arthritis, which is not totally unnatural, but there's also some other things that come from &ellipses; trauma from a crash or maybe just years of beating it up."

POSTHUMOUS HONOR: Charlotte Observer reporter David Poole, who died this week, was selected as the first quarter recipient of the National Motorsports Spirit Award, which recognizes character, sportsmanship, achievement in the face of adversity and contributions to motorsports.

Contact Dustin Long at dustin.long@news-record.com