Being aggressive is part of a NASCAR driver's job

BROOKLYN, Mich. -- Clint Bowyer saw the opening, but he didn't take it. Driving through the esses last week at Watkins Glen International, Casey Mears slipped up just enough to give the Richard Childress Racing driver hope of getting by. Then Bowyer remembered his position at the outer edge of Chase contention, and fell back in line.

"I might have been able to get my pinkie toe through the door," he said with a wry smile. "If we were just racing to be racing, a racer would have taken that gap in the door and shoved it through."

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He would have, because that's what racers do -- beat, bang, and use their automobile as a giant pry bar to wrest position after position away from their opponents. Strip away points and Chase berths and all the other things that force drivers to be more conservative than they'd like to, and at its heart you have a sport built on driver personality and sheer aggression. NASCAR is popular because its founders insisted upon keeping competition relatively close at any cost, its participants are more accessible to fans than those in almost any other sport, and its drivers take a certain degree of satisfaction from leaning on the other guy.

It's that physical nature -- the rubbing part of the racing -- that sets NASCAR apart from more delicate forms of auto racing. People like Dale Earnhardt, Cale Yarborough and Jimmy Spencer made a living off it. Aggression helped NASCAR gain a foothold in a country where the most popular sport involves helmeted men inflicting violence on one another in the pursuit of an oblong leather ball. Aggression, in the form of drivers throwing haymakers in the aftermath of the 1979 Daytona 500, helped take it nationwide. Aggression is hard-wired into the heads of drivers, who are taught at a young age that's as integral to winning as tires and fuel.

Only much later, when the races get longer and the cars get more powerful and the money gets bigger, are they forced to learn how to temper it, how to clamp a lid on all that vehicle-moving emotion that starts churning the instant they flip the ignition switch. It never stays bottled up for too long; the prospect of 43 drivers denying their nature for three solid hours each Sunday becomes about as likely as Kevin Harvick and Juan Montoya opening a bed and breakfast. The trick then becomes to manage it, to traipse the gray area that entails acting as both the hammer and the velvet glove at the same time.

"It's a very fine line. I don't even know that there is a line," Denny Hamlin said. "I think it's all in how people interpret it. When it goes down to the end of the race, that's kind of a little more gray area than not. When guys are bumping into each other in the beginning and middle part, yes, that's unacceptable. I think really, people think there's a line, but there really isn't. It also depends on who you're racing. Are you racing a teammate? That's too aggressive. Racing everyone else, it's not. It's tough to really distinguish it."

Added Carl Edwards: "The biggest thing is, you don't want to ruin somebody else's day if you don't need to. You don't want to have something happen and have somebody get caught up in something. That's the tough part. Trust me, when you do that, you feel just as bad for the guy as he is mad at you. It's just tough. As a racecar driver, late in a race, you take chances. There's a fine line between being a hero and being an idiot who wrecks somebody. I've done both of them. It's sometimes hard to do."

Drivers are put in something of an impossible position -- be aggressive enough to try and win the race, but not so aggressive that you take yourself or someone else out. This in a sport where episodes like Earnhardt's bump-and-run past Terry Labonte at Bristol have become legendary; where Robby Gordon emerged as a folk hero in some eyes for punting Marcos Ambrose at Montreal (watch video). Of course, the popularity of that aggression waxes and wanes depending on who's doing the bumping and who's being bumped, an issue that brings us to a certain Colombian whose ferociousness on the racetrack has become as polarizing as Ford versus Chevrolet.

What happened last week at Watkins Glen was epic NASCAR, a terribly entertaining race highlighted by an ultimately harmless shoving match between Montoya and Harvick, both taken out in a wreck with 17 laps to go (watch video). Montoya, who hasn't backed down from anyone or anything all season, was blamed by many for starting the incident by trying to block Martin Truex Jr., even though the Dale Earnhardt Inc. driver said at Michigan that he "took full responsibility" for the initial contact, and even tried to reach Montoya on the telephone last week.

Harvick has pulled no punches, saying Montoya "drives like he doesn't know what he's doing," and that his view "is pretty widespread" throughout the garage (read more). A sampling of opinions doesn't necessarily back that up, revealing that many of Montoya's peers see him going through the same growing pains many other first-time NASCAR drivers have endured. Formula One, with its austere points system and wild dash for the first turn, can be every bit as aggressive as the fender-bending short tracks that have produced many of Nextel Cup's top drivers.

"Sure, he's aggressive. It seems like he's always on, or over, that edge," Truex said. "The more experience he gets, the more he'll be able to keep himself out of bad situations. He's doing a fine job."

"Montoya has put himself in many situations that someone else has come out the loser. There is no question about that," Jeff Burton added. "He is trying to feel his way through this thing. He is an aggressive driver. He has come here to win, immediately, and he is driving accordingly. He doesn't necessarily have the experience in these cars to drive as aggressively as, say, Jeff Gordon can, and still get by with it. It's still a learning process. He has been in the middle of more stuff than most people have, there is no question about it. No one questions Montoya's ability to drive a racecar, at least no one that I have spoken to. It's just a matter of him getting the experience to go along with the ability that he has."

Take away the pedigree, the Indianapolis 500 championship and the seven F1 wins, and Montoya's situation isn't too unlike those others have faced entering NASCAR's premier level. Jeff Gordon, now a four-time champion, wrecked cars at a record pace when he first broke into the show. Drivers like Tony Stewart, Kyle Busch, David Ragan, Robby Gordon, and even Harvick -- remember when people called him the Instigator? -- have periodically been dogged by peers claiming they're driving too aggressively and needlessly taking other people out.

It happens. As long as there are cars on the racetrack, some are going to get bent up and put out of commission. As long as drivers climb the career ladder or change series, some are going to face accusations that they're pushing too hard. Somewhere out there is that elusive gray area, that ethereal borderline between aggression and recklessness. Every driver has to try to find it. It's that quest that keeps people coming back.