Competing with road rage at 200 mph

Racing at 150 mph last fall in Dover, Del., NASCAR driver Kyle Petty suddenly felt the back of his 3,400-pound stock car lift off the pavement. An eye-blink later, he slammed into the track’s retaining wall.

He’d been hit from behind by the No. 11 car of Denny Hamlin. As 137,000 spectators looked on, Petty spun around and came to rest in his crumpled Dodge as one of his crewmen said over the radio: “The 11 just friggin’ ran all over you.”

Hamlin drove to the garage and was waiting for repairs when a furious Petty rushed up, yelled at him and slapped Hamlin’s helmet visor. Hamlin jumped out and went after Petty until NASCAR officials and crew members held them apart.

“You smack me in the helmet, and I’m going to punch you in the face,” Hamlin said after his-run in with Petty. “You meet me someplace else and we’ll settle it.”

Millions of NASCAR fans not only watched TV replays of the wreck, they also witnessed the whole scuffle through the lens of Hamlin’s in-car camera.

Hardly a NASCAR race passes without fans seeing at least one driver’s road rage in the premier Sprint Cup Series, a 36-race circuit that holds its second race of the season, the Auto Club 500, today in Fontana.

NASCAR drivers have cursed competitors on TV, shoved each other on pit road, thrown their helmets at rivals, crashed into other cars in retribution and, on rare occasion, ripped off their fireproof gloves to throw a punch.

This season hadn’t even begun when tempers flared again.

In practice for an exhibition race before the Daytona 500, Kurt Busch angrily banged his Dodge into Tony Stewart’s Toyota on pit road after the two had crashed at Daytona International Speedway.

When the drivers were hauled before NASCAR officials for a tongue lashing, Stewart reportedly took a swing at Busch and NASCAR put both on probation for six races.

If NASCAR believes a driver intentionally hits another car to the point of jeopardizing other drivers’ safety, it will levy a penalty.

Otherwise, incidental and accidental bumping is commonplace in stock-car racing, setting the stage for the drivers’ disputes.

Most of their quarrels are forgotten days later. But they happen with such regularity that it raises the question: What unspoken rules of racing are violated that make NASCAR races such fertile ground for road rage?

The blowups spring in part from the grueling, dangerous and competitive nature of stock-car racing, drivers say.

Aggressive by nature, top drivers spend four hours driving at frightening speeds, often within a foot of a rival car to take advantage of aerodynamics to boost their speed, as in-car temperatures soar above 100 degrees.

Drivers are under tremendous pressure to finish high, and they’re tempted to cut corners. Fatigue sets in. Tempers grow short.

Yet few deny that the flare-ups, and the fans’ ability to see them live on TV, is one reason why NASCAR is thriving. “Something happens, you get right out of the car and a camera is right in your face,” said Stewart, a two-time NASCAR season champion who often finds himself involved in controversy. “I’m the first one to open my mouth before I think about what I’m saying. We don’t get a cool-off period like other sports do.”

These tantrums aren’t mere theater to rev up NASCAR’s appeal, said driver Scott Pruett, 47, a veteran of several forms of racing who is known for his share of post-race rows. “The drivers are in a sport where you can literally get hurt badly. There’s even the potential of death,” Pruett said. “It’s hot, it’s intense, you’re very passionate about it . . . and then you get run into with one lap to go. Tempers are going to fly.”

The cars and tracks used in NASCAR also play a role in the scuffles.

When NASCAR started more than a half-century ago, the cars were “stock,” or modified versions of passenger cars that came off Detroit’s assembly lines. Today they’re full-scale aerodynamic race cars from the ground up, with 800-horsepower engines and a tubular cage within the car to protect the driver, with only a faint resemblance to the Chevys, Fords, Dodges and Toyotas on the street.

And those NASCAR bodies can take a licking, unlike the sleek race cars used in the Indianapolis 500 and in the international Formula One series. Even a slight crash usually cripples those much lighter cars with narrow bodies and exposed axles, wings and wheels that can’t be quickly repaired.

In NASCAR the cars are more durable, allowing drivers to be more aggressive. Bumpers, fenders and side panels often take a pounding, enabling drivers to nurse their cars back to the pits so crewmen can pound the sheet metal back into place or apply a duct-tape bandage, allowing the driver to stay in the race.

The amount of damage often depends on the track.

NASCAR races are held at tracks as short as a half-mile and as long as 2.66 miles. With 43 cars on the cramped, smaller tracks, there can be dozens of incidental bumps between cars in a single race.

“On a half-mile track, it could be every lap,” said driver Kasey Kahne. “And there are guys who enjoy rubbing fenders.”

Drivers commonly finish races with large circles on the sides of their cars, courtesy of their rivals’ wheels.

But at the superspeedways of Daytona and Talladega, where the cars whip around at 200 mph on high-banked corners of up to 33 degrees, the margin for error narrows.

At those tracks, and others, aerodynamics play a key role in strategy. Two cars “drafting” -- one behind the other -- can travel 5 mph faster than a lone car, which is why cars line up behind one another like a freight train. Another move is “bump drafting,” where a driver gently nudges the car in front of him, to generate extra speed in this favorable air pocket.

Of course, at those speeds even the slightest mistake when two cars touch can mean disaster, sparking car wrecks and finger-pointing over who was to blame.

But it’s the more flagrant collisions that cross the line for many drivers. It might be a hard push from behind that spins out the driver in front and sends him crashing into the wall, or a driver pinching another in a corner and forcing him off the track.

Drivers especially feel an unwritten rule is broken when a rival runs into them early in the race when it’s unnecessary to gain a spot in the standings or near the race’s end if neither has a chance of winning.

“You’ll make some contact quite a bit,” Pruett said. “There’s a lot of give and take. But if he runs into you from behind and spins you around, that’s a whole different set of circumstances.”

It’s a distinction that several well-known racers are about to learn. Former Indianapolis 500 winners Sam Hornish Jr. and Dario Franchitti are moving to NASCAR this year, just as Juan Pablo Montoya, another former Indy 500 winner, did in 2007.

Last year Montoya and driver Kevin Harvick got into a shoving match and slapped each other’s helmets after they crashed at Watkins Glen, N.Y. Asked moments later what they talked about, Harvick replied on TV: “I was talking about kicking his ass.”

Even Montoya’s teammate, Pruett, lashed out at Montoya in 2007. Pruett blamed Montoya, then a NASCAR rookie, for “lowdown, nasty, dirty driving.” That happened after Pruett, who was in first place, was crashed out from behind by Montoya in a NASCAR race in Mexico City.

“I got seriously run into 10 or 11 times my first year” in NASCAR, Pruett said. “I figured a lot of that was learning the rules of the road.”

Part of NASCAR’s allure is that fans choose their favorites among the 43 drivers who start each race, including such stars as Stewart, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Jeff Gordon. If one driver goes after their hero, the fans’ stake in the sport only deepens.

These eruptions by drivers also are embedded in the sport’s heritage. Many identify the 1979 Daytona 500 as the most memorable stock-car race in history, largely because it ended with a fistfight on TV with Cale Yarborough, Donnie Allison and his brother Bobby Allison after a last-lap crash allowed Richard Petty to win the coveted race.

For its part, NASCAR frequently -- and privately -- scolds and sometimes penalizes drivers who have thrown tantrums.

Ironically, some observers believe the threat of NASCAR’s penalties is muffling drivers who otherwise might let their tempers flare even more often. NASCAR Chairman Brian France said recently that NASCAR might be a bit less heavy handed. “There’s lots of emotion flying fast and heavy at the events.” When it comes to “drivers expressing themselves,” he said, “we want to see more of that.”

Regardless, many feuds are left to the drivers to settle, what Pruett calls a system of “checks and balances” in the sport. “It’s self-governed by the drivers, because you know you’re going to see the guy the next weekend and the week after that.”

Despite NASCAR’s grueling nine-month season, its drivers almost never sit out any of the 36 races, which contributes to the raw nerves.

“Every week you’re racing against the same guys,” said driver David Gilliland. “Something could have happened two weeks ago, something little, and then it festers and you might not even know it.”

Gilliland learned the NASCAR drivers’ “rules” when he moved up to the Cup series full-time last year. He made some goofs -- and irritated veterans such as Stewart -- by slowing down too soon or going into turns in the wrong spot. “You make mistakes on the track and upset all these other drivers,” Gilliland said. “By the time you learn, these guys already have chips on their shoulders toward you.”

In addition, “there are some drivers that will never give you an inch, even if they’re a lap down,” he said.

Which drivers? Gilliland won’t say.

Pruett, though, isn’t shy about naming the toughest drivers. “Tony Stewart, depending on where it’s at in the race,” he said. “You’ll get into it with Jeff Gordon, Robby Gordon. Harvick got into me a couple of times pretty hard.”

Gilliland hopes to avoid any post-race brawls this year now that he has a full season under his belt. But the learning process wasn’t easy.

Soon after he arrived, Gilliland said, there was one race where he was holding up Jeff Gordon, the four-time NASCAR season champion.

“I was trying to be nice, so I moved over and let him go. Then I got a hand gesture,” Gilliland said. “But it’s over. Now I talk to him all the time.”

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james.peltz@latimes.com