Uhh, I guess it’s really “game theory on the roads of Belgium” right now, but you get the idea.

Last year, RAND social scientist David Ronfeldt’s piece on game theory in NASCAR racing got a lot of traction. Game theory’s fascinating, and NASCAR is a terrific laboratory for its study, with complex problems of cooperation and defection.

But NASCAR’s got nothing on Le Tour, where it looks as though Iban Mayo and the Euskaltel squad have been caught behind a split in the peloton. That gives all the “heads of state,” as Phil and Paul would put it, a motivation to cooperate. For now.