Gordon speaks up, and 'Dega offers smooth ride (cont'd)

"You look at the Busch race [Saturday], you just had guys slamming into one another through the corners and just doing silly things. Getting a run from 10 car lengths back and carrying momentum and never checking up and running into the back of a guy and turning him into the wall. I think my point was, even though I knew it wasn't going to stop bump-drafting all together, it would just make guys and NASCAR think about it. If they see somebody being aggressive, to get on top of it right away."

Lap-by-Lap

Jeff Gordon passed Dale Earnhardt on the all-time wins list but it wasn't easy in a race that saw 42 lead changes.

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Gordon's comments just might have made a difference. Sunday's race often featured drivers on their best behavior, with long green-flag stretches and only two accidents involving more than two cars. There was a mini-Big One on Lap 131 when Tony Raines and Ricky Rudd found themselves squeezed in tight traffic, and the typical pileup near the end. Other than that, it was relatively clean. Coincidence?

"I don't know if that made a difference or not, but I will have to say, [Sunday] was one of the best days. Yeah, they were bump-drafting, but they weren't doing it in a way that was out of control. Yeah, there were still crashes, but once you get to the end of the race, all that's off. It's going to get crazy. But let's at least wait until we get to the end, if we're going to do it at all," Gordon said.

"It's going to be an ongoing battle that we're going to have as drivers, as competitors and with NASCAR as to how we manage that. You want them to make the call and force us into a box, but then you don't want them to make a judgment call. You want to be able to police it as a driver, but at the same time, your mind isn't capable of doing that on the racetrack. Your mind's definitely not thinking rational."

The entire episode was somewhat out of character for Gordon, who despite his stature as NASCAR's most successful active driver has shied away from becoming the voice of the garage. No driver has truly embraced that position since Earnhardt, who knew his opinions carried a tremendous amount of weight both with his peers and series officials, and wasn't shy about using it to try and influence policy.

That's not Gordon's style. But Sunday's drivers' meeting, and the race that followed, may have offered evidence of just how much clout the four-time champion really has in the garage.

"I know that Jeff doesn't want to be Dale. He wants to be himself and do things his own way. I know he doesn't want to be in this position to be the voice of the drivers, but he almost has the responsibility that's developing for him, and he has the right approach on how to handle NASCAR and how to handle divers and how to present things the right way," Johnson said.

"I feel if many other drivers would have spoken up and said what Jeff did in the drivers' meeting, it would have come off wrong and people would have laughed. It wouldn't have come off the same way. But Jeff is at that spot in his career, and he's so well spoken, and comes from a fair place when he's speaking about those things, that people are listening. I think that role is developing for him whether he wants it or not."