NASCAR: Did team tactics taint Talladega?

NASCAR's multicar Sprint Cup superteams have been a point of contention among fans for years, but the competition-limiting potential of team tactics was a major talking point on social media after Sunday's round of Talladega. The race marked the cut-off race for the "Round of 8" in the Chase for the Sprint Cup – but was also a restrictor-plate race with a well-known propensity for big wrecks.

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Evidently with the latter in mind, three of the Joe Gibbs Racing drivers – Matt Kenseth, Carl Edwards and Kyle Busch (pictured above) – took a noticebly conservative approach to the race, content to remain well back of the leaders while doing enough to advance in the Chase, which they did with 28th-, 29th- and 30th-place finishes, respectively. However, that strategy meant they were unable to work with teammate Denny Hamlin, who was on the Chase "bubble" and needed a strong finish to advance. Hamlin ultimately raced his way in by finishing third and beating out Austin Dillon in a tiebreaker. As a result, JGR Toyotas now fill half the spots in the Round of 8.

Chase considerations didn't apply to Tony Stewart, who'd already been eliminated from the playoff series, but the veteran who is set to retire at the end of this season told his Stewart-Haas crew that he also planned to stay at the back of the field rather than risk being caught up in a big wreck – which never happened, this time.

Richard Childress Racing's Dillon, and Hendrick Motorsports' Chase Elliott, who were among the four Chase qualifiers eliminated on Sunday, both openly acknowledged their teammates had tried to work with them to help them advance in the Chase, or at least were "trying not to hurt us," as Elliott put it. Despite the help, Dillon fell an estimated 2ft short of passing Aric Almirola for seventh, which would have been enough to put him ahead of Hamlin on points.

Tweeting in response to fans dissatisfied with the way things played out, Kyle Busch suggested that complaints about sandbagging drivers were misdirected: