NASCAR Talladega | What we learned during the 1000Bulbs.com 500

Nascar

Do you remember the Total Team Control NASCAR video game? That was the 2006 version of EA Sports’ officially licensed franchise in which a player could take control all four teammates from a given organization like Hendrick Motorsports, Roush Racing or Dale Earnhardt Inc. and get each one of them to the front, one driver at a time. If you’ve played the game, then you might have been hit with all the nostalgia upon watching the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series race on Sunday at Talladega Superspeedway. Stewart-Haas Racing legitimately Total Team Controlled the hell out of that race. Not once, not twice, but thrice did all four drivers manage to link up 1-2-3-4 on Sunday, breaking away from the pack and threatened to pull away from the rest of the field. If not for the occasional caution and stage racing, Stewart-Haas Racing very well could have naturally lapped into the top-10 in the 1000Bulbs.com 500. It was the kind of ass-kicking that you just don’t see in restrictor-plate racing -- NASCAR’s long-standing pillar of parity, where pack racing is supposed to ensure an opportunity for anyone to race near the front of the field. Stewart-Haas stacked the deck this past weekend, taking the first four positions in Saturday time trials, and selflessly committed to a strategy of staying in line and pulling away from the rest of the field until the deciding final laps.....