iNSIDE SCOOP: How Far Will They Go?

In 1999, Dale Earnhardt won his 73rd NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race by dumping Terry Labonte in Turn 2 at Bristol Motor Speedway.

It was the famous “rattle his cage” race, where Earnhardt got passed by Labonte coming off Turn 4 and then drove through him off Turn 2, causing the usually partisan Bristol crowd to react negatively to the maneuver.

“I’d rather have raced him side-by-side for the win, not wreck him,” a somewhat chastened Earnhardt told Jerry Punch in Victory Lane. “He got into me in three and four and I knew I was going to get back to him. I didn’t want to wreck him, just rattle his cage a little.”

He did more than that, and for the first time in a long time, the crowd didn’t like it. There were a smattering of boos and a lot of…interesting hand gestures involved. Earnhardt looked like he’d been slapped.

Fast forward nearly 15 years, with the spring Bristol race coming this weekend, and you’ll probably find a different attitude among the fans in the stands.

With the new Chase format this year, if there was ever a place to rattle some cages, it is Bristol.

What that means is, if you’re running second on the final lap, you might just think about using up the leader to win a race and make the Chase.

Dale Earnhardt Jr., obviously, has already clinched a spot in the Chase, more or less. So has Kevin Harvick and so has Brad Keselowski. If one of those guys is leading the race and someone who hasn’t won a race (Kyle Busch and Jimmie Johnson immediately come to mind, along with Denny Hamlin, et al) is right behind, I’d sit back, grab the popcorn and drink in all the gory details.

Of course, it depends on who is doing the dumping and who is getting dumped, doesn’t it? If Busch is leading, say, and Johnson is behind him using the bumper, it would be different than the reverse, no? Of course, if you’re going to use someone up to win a race, you might want to think twice about dumping Busch.

Ask Ron Hornaday about that. 

Question is, will today’s drivers dump someone to win? I think that NASCAR racing, with its historical emphasis on consistency, has bred that hero-or-zero reflex out of today’s drivers. That’s just an opinion, so settle down.

Bobby Allison, Cale Yarborough, Bobby Isaac…those guys would drive right through you to get the checkered first. Earnhardt was that way, too, obviously. In his younger days, Jeff Gordon would give you the bumper, and Tony Stewart is about as throwback as you can be, but he wouldn’t crash a guy to win a race. He’d move him, sure, but not all the way. Richard Petty wouldn’t. In more recent times, Mark Martin wouldn’t. Johnson hasn’t been known to use anybody up, at least no more than he himself was used up.

In short, not very many drivers today would do what Earnhardt did. Terry Labonte was in his prime in 1999, three years removed from winning a series title and still very popular among the fan base. The fact that Earnhardt did it, whether he meant to or not, still resulted in a backlash that Earnhardt wasn’t expecting.

If I had to put a crash/no-crash label on the field for this weekend’s Food City 500, I’d say that only five drivers would absolutely do what Earnhardt did. Five more would think about it really hard, but not do it in the end.

The rest? No cage-rattling whatsoever would go on, and they’d take the points and hit the helipad for the trip to the airport.

Is this good or bad? We’ll know on Sunday at about 5 p.m.