There's bumping, and then there's bumping

By DAVID GREEN

Yes, there was some contact when Tony Stewart made his way past Jimmie Johnson to take second place in the Subway 500 at Martinsville Speedway Sunday.

But let's clarify things just a bit here: Stewart's move was NOT the infamous bump-and-run that guys such as Subway 500 winner Jeff Gordon use regularly. It is ignorant at worst and disingenuous at best to suggest the tactics are the same.

Stewart got a fender inside Johnson's left rear going into Turn 1 of lap 490, and held his ground when Johnson tried to slam the door on him. The contact, which caused Johnson to bobble, was initiated by Johnson as much as by Stewart; Stewart could have tried to brake and give Johnson the inside line, or Johnson could have given Stewart room on the inside.

Each driver had an option, and each had some risk in the matter. The contact easily might have flattened Stewart's right front tire.

Such is not the case in the cold-blooded, front bumper-to-rear bumper contact that is designed to knock a competitor out of the groove, rather than fairly take it from him. Usually, the only risk to the bump-and-run artist is retaliation sometime down the road. If the bumper doesn't do a good enough job of his dirty work, as was the case with Kevin Harvick vs. Ricky Rudd at Richmond a couple of years ago, he gets his payback a little sooner rather than later.

What Stewart did versus Johnson Sunday is hard, high-risk racing; what Gordon, Harvick and others do with the bump-and-run is a cheap shot that demeans their achievements, just as the overly roughhouse tactics the late Dale Earnhardt often used made many fans and competitors angry.

In another incident Sunday, Greg Biffle accused Stewart of trying to crowd him into the wall after he moved past Biffle late in the race. Stewart was passing on the inside, and allowed his car to drift upward before he had completely cleared Biffle. The incident angered Biffle, who set out to try to wreck Stewart in retaliation but failed.

Biffle could have held his ground, the way Stewart did in his fight with Johnson, and Stewart might very well have been turned hard into the backstretch wall by contact with Biffle's left front fender. So, if Stewart was in fact deliberately crowding Biffle, who was a lap off the pace, he was taking an extremely stupid risk to do so. If the "crowding" was accidental, it could have been a costly error.

From this perspective, Stewart is a hard-nosed racer, but not a dirty one. I've seen him lose races to the bump-and-run tactic, but I've never seen him win one that way. When and if I do, my feelings about the tactic will be the same as those expressed here.