BRISTOL, Tenn. -- Ask someone from NASCAR to name the vilest word in the English language, and you might get a five-letter response: U-N-I-O-N.

Historically, the sanctioning body has resisted, with all its might, attempts to organize drivers into a unified body -- if that's even possible where the individualists who pilot racecars are concerned.

In 1961, Curtis Turner earned a lifetime ban from NASCAR racing for attempting to create a drivers union -- until Big Bill France commuted his sentence in 1965. NASCAR later squashed the Professional Drivers Association spearheaded by Richard Petty, after France held the inaugural race at Talladega in 1969 despite a boycott of the sport's top stars.

Tony Stewart's outspoken criticism about the hard tires used last week at Atlanta has brought to the forefront the larger question of drivers' input into competition issues. How much should they have, if any? And what form should it take?

Dale Earnhardt Jr., for one, doesn't expect to see a formal drivers organization, but he'd like to believe that NASCAR is listening when those behind the wheels speak their minds.

"There's all kinds -- a million different ways that that could be done -- it's obviously not likely," Earnhardt said of a drivers organization. "The main situation is that, as a driver, you have a hard time listening and believing someone that has never been behind the wheel trying to tell you what needs to happen out on the racetrack, or how things need to be, or should be or this is the way to go."

Only a driver knows what it's like, Earnhardt says, to approach a corner at Daytona that has an awkward transition to the soft walls, or to hit a gap in the backstretch wall at Las Vegas, as Jeff Gordon's Chevrolet did less than two weeks ago.

"We don't sit around and search these things out just to pester," Earnhardt said. "These are things that we actually run into as we go back to these venues over and over and over, and we continue to get frustrated with it and eventually might run into [NASCAR president] Mike [Helton] somewhere or someone and say 'Hey, this is what I think, take it for what it's worth,' and that's that.

"I would like to think that NASCAR does talk to the drivers, the Jeff Burtons and those types. Jeff always errs on the side of safety, and he always has great points and great ideas, in my opinion. I would like to believe that NASCAR does have conversations with those guys somewhere, wherever it would be. I would like to think those things do go on, and that there's a driver influence in a lot of their decisions. I would hope that's the way it is. (Continued)