When NASCAR comes to Talladega, the fans expect to see three and four-wide action. And in recent years, that's exactly what they've gotten, but looks can be deceiving. While the field races around the track four-wide, ten rows deep, everything seems suspiciously under control. And that's because it is. No one is actually going flat-out in those situations.
In modern-day NASCAR with the current generation of car, fuel-saving has become the key to winning at superspeedways -- or at least getting your car near the front. Drivers will spend the majority of the race without even running full throttle, allowing for these spectacular images of four-wide racing, but they're not really racing. They are effectively flying in formation in order to hit a fuel number.
