NASCAR to stop “slam” drafting

Elliott Sadler blamed Jimmie Johnson for starting a seven-car wreck on lap 20 of Sunday's race at Talladega Superspeedway, saying it was too early in the race for Johnson to make such an aggressive move. The dangerous, but increasingly more common, practice of "bump drafting" might have been the real culprit.

Johnson said he was getting a "huge" push from behind from Dale Earnhardt Jr., who was riding his back bumper, pushing him to go faster.

"There is only so much you can do when you're getting a push," Johnson said. "I'm on the brake trying to get the car slowed down and waving the guy off behind me."

Drivers have been denouncing the dangers of restrictor-plate racing since the 1980s, but hard, aggressive bump drafting might be making things even worse.

"It's in our hands, the drivers' hands, to control," said Jeff Gordon, who was caught in the second major crash, an eight-car pileup on lap 66. "I think the bump drafting is ridiculous. And I hope we can learn a lesson from things like this, but it doesn't seem like we do."

The plates sap engine power, keeping speeds under 200 mph at Talladega and Daytona International Speedway. With reduced horsepower, cars tend to run at relatively equal speeds in one huge pack. It's hard to pass, and drivers have had to find other ways to work their way to the front.

Right now drivers' preferred method for advancing through the pack — believe it or not — is to use their front bumper to ram the rear bumper of the car in front of them, pushing both cars to go faster. Teams have beefed up the front ends of their cars, and the ramming has become more violent.

"There was one time when my front bumper was pinned to a guy in front of me and the guy behind me just was pushing me," Gordon said. "And I really wasn't driving the car any more. And that's a pretty scary feeling at 190-some miles per hour."

Earnhardt said last week he was one of the few drivers who really enjoyed aggressive bump drafting, which he labeled "slam drafting." But Earnhardt said he wasn't trying to bump draft Johnson on Sunday: "The 48 car had to slow down for something, and I had nowhere to go." USA Today

[Editor's Note: Rumor has it that NASCAR will implement a rule that does not allow a team to strengthen the front and rear bumpers so that drivers can bump or slam the car in front of them. If the nose were to deform you will see how fast dangerous bump drafting stops.]