Bump draft dodging

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – Intentionally spear an opposing player in the back or below the waist with your helmet and you're sure to be penalized in the NFL.

Low bridge an opposing player on purpose while he's going up for or coming down from a shot in the NBA and you'll get whistled for an intentional foul.

Throw a baseball at someone's head with malice and intent in Major League Baseball and you're promptly on your way to the showers, if not headed toward a suspension.

Notice the similarities? Intentionally do something that has the potential to seriously harm and injure in other major professional sports, and you wind up being heavily penalized in some form or fashion.

More often than not, the penalty fits the infraction and the offender hopefully learns a valuable lesson.

But when it comes to one of the most dangerous and scariest practices in NASCAR – bump drafting – there's very little the sanctioning body has done or proclaims it can do.

We saw yet another example of that in Sunday's Budweiser Shootout here at Daytona International Speedway.

Even though he finished a respectable third in the 72-lap exhibition sprint, defending Nextel Cup champion Tony Stewart was livid afterward. Stewart had just finished a race that saw he and the 20 other contestants narrowly dodge, only by good fortune and luck, major accidents at the sprawling 2½-mile track.

The reason for Stewart's ire was the bump drafting, which entails intentionally slamming into the car in front of you. The purpose is actually to push the next car along – and some drivers assert it's a necessary move – but do it at the wrong time or at the wrong angle, and wrecks easily can ensue.

And wrecks at restrictor plate tracks have the potential to be especially brutal.

Really, bump drafting isn't drafting at all. It's legalized road rage – legal, at least, in NASCAR terms. There are laws prohibiting this obviously unsafe maneuver on highways, so why aren't existing rules in NASCAR's books against unsafe or overaggressive driving being enforced when it comes to bump drafting?

NASCAR vice president of communications Jim Hunter said after Sunday's race that the sanctioning body has tried to come up with different ways to, at the very least, control bump drafting. But, Hunter noted, sanctioning body officials have to be cautious to make major changes in one area, lest they unwittingly compromise safety in yet another area.

That's understandable and laudable.

Hunter says NASCAR has explored "softening up" front bumpers on cars so that there will be less resulting impact and damage – and thus less chance for a car being knocked out of control – when bump drafting occurs.

Again, laudable, but not entirely realistic.

Hunter also said NASCAR is reluctant to simply penalize every driver that bump drafts, as some of the allegedly guilty might actually be victims of circumstance, such as being unable to avoid impact when a car in front suddenly checks up.

We've all heard the old saying "rubbin's racin'," and invoking that expression is tantamount to accepting the frequent contact between cars that has been a tradition since the first NASCAR race was held more than a half-century ago.

But with the speeds being what they are today, compounded with the already unpredictable and unsafe nature of restrictor plate racing, if Stewart and other drivers say they fear for their lives, the onus is on NASCAR to take immediate action.

Perhaps the simplest answer is for NASCAR to be as strict as other professional leagues and start assessing rough driving penalties more frequently. With close to two dozen TV cameras covering each race, not to mention in-car cameras in many of the 43 cars on the race track, almost every angle is covered.

Much like instant replay officials in the NFL, have NASCAR put several of its own officials in front of TV monitors to closely scrutinize who's intentionally bumping whom.

If NASCAR tells teams that it will aggressively police and enforce existing rules and/or create tougher guidelines – and then actually does so – only then will we likely see a significant diminishment of bump drafting.

And if it takes continued use of the black flag or harsher penalties to get the message across, so be it.

"We're going to kill somebody," Stewart said after the Shootout. "Somebody else is going to die at Daytona or Talladega with what we're doing right here. I hope I'm not around when it happens."

If things stay the same, you can bet it's not a matter of if, but rather a matter of when a bump draft causes tragic results. Who knows, it could happen this week at Daytona.

At that point, all the safety innovations NASCAR has brought to the sport since Dale Earnhardt's death five years ago will have been for naught.