To drag this briefly back on topic, having knowledge about the competitors, teams, etc. makes a big difference. Under the right circumstances you don't need to be a super-powerful animal of a rider nor particularly tactically astute. You just need to know what's going on.
E.g. my last crit last season, a bunch of us were fed up with some big team (and especially one rider from that team) dominating the weekly crit series, so a couple of our different teams formed a plan to try and even the odds a bit. The plan was to attack the race continually until we got one or more of our guys into the break, then block. A simple plan, but between our teams, we had the numbers to make it work. My teammate attacked first, practically from the gun. About a lap and a half later, the big team had just about brought him back, and I saw their main rider, my nemesis winding up to launch a big move. I followed his jump, and a guy from the team we had allied ourselves with came along as well. Boom, race over for everyone but us on lap three.
The point being that if you were in that field and weren't on one of those three feuding teams and didn't know who you should mark, you were basically screwed. If you knew the plan, it would have been easy to follow the right move. I'm not very strong in the wind; at 124 lbs and with a very average level of talent, there's no getting around that. I'm also not a tactical genius. I don't expect to be making the right break on a regular basis in my races this year. But I knew who was strong, I had extra inside information that if I was in the break, not only my team but another team would be blocking for me, and I had just enough of a jump (barely!) to go with the strong guy at the right time and hang on for dear life for the rest of the race. Netted me a podium spot.
So try to know your fellow racers, and know who is annoyed at whom!