Depending on how you look at it, having teammates on a NASCAR track could be a great thing or a huge source of frustration. When it works well, you get winning drivers and occasionally a nice line of teammates crossing the line (like with Roush Racing recently). When it doesn’t you get Kyle Busch.

I don’t understand why the term teammate is used. Drives help each other, sometimes, but not every time. If it was a team in other sports acting in this manner you would get basketball players never passing the ball or outfielders that may or may not go after the ball. The sacrifice bunt would never happen.

Obviously auto racing is a very unique sporting event. Every driver is rewarded individually for their own actions. Only one will be in the winners circle. But driving for the same owners in the same team is beneficial in many ways. Slipping past a slower teammate at a crucial point in the race and be the key to a win. Drafting is always a benefit. But where is the line.

Did the lack of a true team cost Kyle Busch the six or seven inches that would have made victory. Was it the feeling of team camaraderie that could have caused Jimmie Johnson and Jeff Gordon to not help him out? Did Denny Hamlin deserve the tongue lashing that Tony Stewart gave him?

Perhaps the best view of teammates in NASCAR comes from Dale Earnhardt Jr.,

“But when it gets down to the last 50 laps - I always say after the last tire change on a mile-and-a-half track - it’s every man for himself.”