They look a lot like those double-joined bugs that wander over the sidewalk on a late summer evening, hinged at the middle with one part pushing and another part pulling. NASCAR drivers got the bug, and the Talladega finish on Sunday saw four bug-pairs speeding down the sidewalk to the finish.
It was a nudge from the back-half and Dale Earnhardt that gave Jimmy Johnson just enough of a surge to slip across the line in a nearly-200-mile-an-hour photo finish.
It is the lastest NASCAR trend. Cars racing in pairs, instead of individually. A second car – usually a teammate, but not always – slips in behind the rear bumper and the two cars hurtle around the track. The lead driver watches for traffic, the rear driver following a spoiler.
According to the images and the electronic timers, the car driven by Jimmy Johnson hit the start-finish line 0.002 seconds ahead of Clint Bowyer. That’s 2-thousands of a single second. In distance, it measures to about 12 inches.
“I can’t thank Jimmy enough,” said Johnson, who made an effort in that direction by giving the official checkered flag to his bumper-car teammate as a token of his appreciation.
The new restrictor-plate driving style doesn’t always work out for the best. With bumpers touching at 190 miles an hour, the slightest catch will send the front car careening, as was the case several time over the course of the Talladega day. The follow-up car has a limited amount of air-flow to the engine, and several teams were forced to flip-flop positions to allow engines to cool.
Even fairly recently, it was standard practice for the drivers to bunch together in large assemblies, using the drafting effect to cut wind resistance. Then, someone figured out it was faster to have a single car driving behind, touching bumpers, racing as a unit.
Deals are cut and in-car radio frequencies are exchanged to allow drivers to communicate as they fly around the track, deciding who is in front, when to change, and – ultimately – who will win. In pushing from behind, Dale Earnhardt virtually eliminated himself from the winning spot.
He finished fourth on Sunday, officially – but part of the first-place finish if you consider the driving tandem.
One guy in the pairing would run out front for a while, then they’d switch positions before the driver doing the pushing overheated his car.
The most important thing was staying together. During an early pit stop, Johnson stayed in a little longer to make some adjustments on his car. Earnhardt just idled in his box, waiting to go back out with his partner
