The closer you are to the front, the less squirrely riding there is, but it sounds like you found trouble anyway. That doesn't mean time-trialing off the front, but it does mean staying if the first couple rows. If the top 10 riders were 5 wide, then no one was making a big effort to keep the speed of the pack up. That's a problem. If someone was driving the front, then you would have been 2 wide and not had those problems. It needs to be an effort by the entire group.