iNSIDE SCOOP: Resistance is Futile...

SPARTA, Ky. -- In reading the finishing order from the Quaker State 400, it reveals a couple of interesting items.

First, consider the numbers 236 and 267. The first number is the laps led by Team Penske on Saturday night. The second number is the total number of laps in the race.

That's 88.4 percent of the total laps run led by two cars from the same team.

Down here in the South, we call that a fanny-waxing. Add to that the fact that only one other driver, Kyle Busch, led a lap, and it rises to the status of old-school butt whipping.

How about this? Joey Logano finished ninth...on seven cylinders. 

It is noteworthy that despite being down on power, Logano was still able to finish ahead of six-time champion Jimmie Johnson.

All that leads us to the fact that while Team Penske won the day, Hendrick Motorsports and its associated teams are well on the way toward winning the war.

HMS teammates finished 5th, 6th, 8th and 10th on the night, and satellite team Stewart-Haas had its cars 4th, 11th, 12th and 21st. 

Five of the eight cars were in the top 10, and seven of them were in the top 12.

Utter domination is around the bend, yes?

Those two teams alone have won more than half of the races run so far this year, nine for 17.

As the Russian astronaut in the movie Armageddon famously asked in a thick Boris Badinoff accent: "Is thees good or bad?"

As with a lot of things, it depends on where you stand when you look at it.

It's good for the HMS/SHR teams, of course, their employees, team members, sponsors and fans. It's good for Chevrolet. It is good for Rick Hendrick.

Is it good for Ford and Toyota? Nope. How about TV? Unh-unh. Fans of drivers who don't race for HMS or SHR? Probably not. Sponsors? Heck no. 

It stands to reason that you don't get to be The Man until you beat The Man, so this is an exercise in pointing out the obvious success enjoyed by HMS/SHR (I am so far successfully resisting the urge to call them The Borg, but if this keeps up, it's coming).

You can't fault them for doing their jobs exceptionally well. That's sort of the point of this whole shooting match, after all. The only real contenders to the B...HMS/SHR juggernaut are Kentucky winner Keselowski and teammate Logano. Kyle Busch is in the same neighborhood, and Carl Edwards has won twice, but that's about it.

Toyota has exactly two victories this season, one for Busch and one for Denny Hamlin. Matt Kenseth has not won yet, though he did run fourth at Kentucky. Clint Bowyer has not won yet this year. Nor has Brian Vickers. 

Ford has five victories to Chevrolet's nine. RCR hasn't won yet, but Ryan Newman ran third and is currently in the putative Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup field by virtue of his standing in the points. 

What it boils down to is, if it continues as it is, then we're facing assimilation on a galactic scale.

Resistance is futile...