Bumping heads: Stewart worried about race safety

The defending champ thinks bump-drafting should be outlawed.
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. (AP) -- Chad Knaus will probably watch the Daytona 500 on television at home. If Tony Stewart really wants to take a stand, he'd join him.
The season is barely a day old and NASCAR already has two major issues to work though. The sanctioning body acted quickly on the first one, suspending Knaus on Monday from the biggest race of the year because the crew chief made an illegal alteration to Jimmie Johnson's car before his qualifying attempt.
Now NASCAR must turn its attention to Stewart's warning that current racing conditions could lead to a death in the season-opening event.
The defending Nextel Cup champion was upset about the dangerous practice of bump-drafting after his third-place run in Sunday's exhibition race.
Bump-drafting is an aggressive rear-ending maneuver that calls for one driver to slam into the back bumper of the car in front of him to maintain momentum.
The practice is common at Daytona and Talladega, the only two NASCAR tracks that require restrictor-plates to choke the horsepower and keep speeds down. Although it's been going on for years, Stewart thinks it's out of control.
"We're going to kill somebody," Stewart said. "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."
Arguing dangers
Stewart spent more than 20 minutes arguing the dangers in a closed-door session with NASCAR officials, and they said they heard the two-time champion's complaints loud and clear.
"Tony can be emotional at times, but when Tony speaks we're certainly going to listen to him," NASCAR spokesman Jim Hunter said. "He was very rational in the way he presented his thoughts."
But if Stewart is serious about how dangerous it is, then he should be the first to take a stand against it.
Refusing to participate in the Super Bowl of racing might do the trick.
But of course, he never would and never could take such a drastic measure.
For starters, skipping just one event could cripple his season before it even began. Because of NASCAR's complicated points system, missing a race would cost him dearly in the standings and make it very difficult for him to defend his title.
Then there's all the money sponsor Home Depot has shelled out to support his Joe Gibbs Racing team. Sponsors want to see their logos on the track during the "Great American Race." And because Stewart is such a talented racer, his flaming orange paint scheme is guaranteed a ton of television exposure come Sunday.
No union
And don't forget, unlike almost every other professional sport, NASCAR has no union that Stewart could lean on for support. If he did decide to skip the 500 and NASCAR chose to punish him for it -- in this France-family owned sport, anything is possible and rules can be arbitrarily applied -- Stewart would have no one to defend him.
So Stewart will climb into the No. 20 Chevrolet, hit the high banks of Daytona and do what every other driver in the field does: bump-draft.
"Trust me, I did my share of bump-drafting, too," he said after the exhibition race. "But we're going to hurt somebody really bad next Sunday if we don't find some way of calming this down soon."
Although NASCAR has options, including softening the front bumpers so that any significant contact would cause catastrophic, race-ending damage, there's not enough time between now and race day to make the changes.
So there are only two solutions:
UNASCAR can place a handful of officials in the four corners at Daytona who can monitor bump-drafting, then issue subjective penalties to the offenders.
UThe drivers can universally agree to stop doing it.
Neither solution will likely work.
Teams will riot if NASCAR attempts to police the drivers and undoubtedly find the process unfair. And any sort of gentleman's agreement not to bump-draft is fine -- until someone breaks it.
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