Drafting in NASCAR: How the Pack Works at Superspeedways

On the final lap of the April 2011 race at Talladega Superspeedway, Jimmie Johnson crossed the line two thousandths of a second ahead of Clint Bowyer with Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s Chevrolet pressed against his rear bumper. Johnson was not the fastest car on the track that afternoon in any useful sense. Nobody was. He won because the car behind him was pushing at the right moment, and the cars around Bowyer were not.

That is drafting in NASCAR. The leading car punches a hole in the air, and the car tucked in behind it drives into a pocket of lower pressure where there is less resistance. Two cars running nose to tail are faster than either one running alone, because the trailing car also fills the low-pressure wake behind the leader and reduces its drag. At Daytona International Speedway and Talladega, where the engines are restricted and the long banked turns are taken flat out, that effect outweighs almost everything else, so the NASCAR Cup Series field races as a single pack, two and three lanes wide, for hundreds of miles. The rest of this guide is about what drivers do with that fact.

The physics of drafting in NASCAR, without the equations

A stock car at speed is a brick moving through a fluid. The air ahead of it has to be shoved aside, and that costs power. Behind the car, where the air has been pushed out of the way and has not yet closed back in, there is a turbulent zone of lower pressure: the wake.

Put a second car in that wake and two things happen. The trailing car meets air that is already moving forward with the lead car, so it needs less power to hold the same speed. And the lead car, which was dragging that low-pressure zone behind it like an anchor, now has a car filling it. The pressure behind the leader rises, and the leader's drag falls.

So the pair is faster than either car alone. Not slightly faster. Measurably, decisively faster, by enough that a single car on a superspeedway cannot stay with two cars working together, and two cannot stay with a line of eight.

Why the second car gains speed

The trailing car has a surplus. It is producing the same horsepower as the car in front but meeting less resistance, so it accelerates. Close the gap enough and the trailing driver has a choice: stay in line and push, or pull out and try to use that surplus to get alongside. That moment, the pull-out, is where most superspeedway passes begin, and also where most of them fail. The instant the trailing car leaves the wake it meets clean air at full force, and the surplus it built up starts to bleed away.

What changes when the line gets longer

A third car behind the second adds the same effect again, and a fourth again after that. A long, committed line of cars moves faster than a short one. The physics does not reward the leader for being out front; it rewards the cars for being connected. A driver alone at the front of a race at Talladega with nobody behind is a driver who is about to be passed.

Hence the word commentators lean on: a run, meaning speed built in the draft that closes on the car ahead faster than it can respond. The run is the currency of superspeedway racing.

The same principles apply in any form of racing. Formula One ran a drag reduction system from 2011 partly to compensate for how badly the following car is affected by turbulent air in corners, before its 2026 rules replaced it with movable aerodynamics, which our explainer on how F1 aerodynamics shape a race covers. The difference in NASCAR is scale: on a superspeedway the effect is so large that it rewrites the entire race.

Why Daytona and Talladega produce pack racing

Most tracks on the Cup schedule string cars out. Drivers brake for the corners, the better-handling cars pull away through the turns, and the field spreads over a lap or more. Daytona and Talladega do not, and the reasons stack on top of one another.

The first is geometry. Daytona is 2.5 miles around with turns banked at 31 degrees. Talladega is 2.66 miles, the longest oval NASCAR races on, with turns banked at 33 degrees. That banking is steep enough that a Cup car can take the corners flat out without lifting. When nobody has to lift, nobody can gain an advantage through the corner by handling better than the car beside them. Handling stops separating the field.

The second is horsepower. NASCAR deliberately limits the engine at these two tracks so that the cars do not reach speeds at which they become airborne in an accident. A car with less power has less ability to break away from the pack by itself, and so its speed depends even more heavily on the draft.

The third follows from the first two. If the corners do not spread the field out and the engines cannot spread it out either, the cars stay together. They stay together for the whole race unless a crash or a pit cycle breaks them up.

Talladega Superspeedway33degrees

Daytona International Speedway31degrees

Atlanta Motor Speedway28degrees

Charlotte Motor Speedway24degrees

Banking in the main turns, in degrees. Atlanta's figure is after the 2022 reprofile; Charlotte is shown as a typical intermediate oval for comparison.

Show the numbers

Banking in the turns at four NASCAR ovals

Item	Value
Talladega Superspeedway	33degrees
Daytona International Speedway	31degrees
Atlanta Motor Speedway	28degrees
Charlotte Motor Speedway	24degrees

The tracks where the draft rules

Track	Location	Length	Banking in the turns	How the draft plays
Daytona International Speedway	Daytona Beach, Florida	2.5 miles	31 degrees	Full pack racing; handling matters more late in a run as tires wear
Talladega Superspeedway	Talladega, Alabama	2.66 miles	33 degrees	The purest pack on the schedule, routinely three wide
Atlanta Motor Speedway	Hampton, Georgia	1.54 miles	28 degrees since 2022	Pack racing on a shorter, narrower track since the reprofile
Charlotte Motor Speedway	Concord, North Carolina	1.5 miles	24 degrees	Draft helps on the straights; the field spreads out in the corners

Daytona and Talladega are not identical, and drivers will say so. Daytona is narrower, the cars slide around more as the tires wear, and handling creeps back into the picture late in a run. Talladega is wider, which is why it produces more three-wide racing. The general pattern of the schedule, from short tracks to road courses, is set out in our guide to the types of tracks NASCAR races on.

Restrictor plates in 1988 and the tapered spacers that followed

On April 30, 1987, Bill Elliott qualified at Talladega at 212.809 mph. That lap still stands as the fastest qualifying run in NASCAR history, and it will almost certainly stand forever, because what happened in the race a few days later made sure nobody would be allowed near it again.

During that race, Bobby Allison's car cut a tire, spun, lifted into the air and tore down a long section of the catch fence at the edge of the frontstretch. The fence held enough that the car did not reach the grandstands. NASCAR concluded that it could not count on that a second time. From 1988, restrictor plates were mandatory at Daytona and Talladega.

A restrictor plate is a thin aluminum plate with four holes in it, fitted between the carburetor and the intake manifold. It limits how much air, and therefore how much fuel, can enter the engine. Less air means less combustion, which means less power. NASCAR could tune the effect by changing the size of the holes, which is exactly what it did for three decades whenever speeds crept up.

• 212.81Elliott's 1987 Talladega qualifying speed, mph
• 2.66Talladega length, miles
• 2.5Daytona length, miles
• 33Talladega banking, degrees

Elliott's lap is the NASCAR qualifying record, set at Talladega on April 30, 1987, the year before plates became mandatory. Track lengths and banking are as published by the two speedways.

What the plates did to the racing

The plates did what they were meant to do. Speeds came down. They also produced the racing that superspeedways are known for now, and that was not entirely intended. With the power cut, no car could break free of the field. Drivers learned that the draft was the only way to pass, and the fields began running in tight packs for the full distance. The first Big Ones, in the sense the term means today, belong to the plate era.

The switch to tapered spacers

The plate was a part designed for carbureted engines. When NASCAR moved to electronic fuel injection in 2012, the plate stayed in place, but it was an increasingly awkward fit. For the 2019 season NASCAR introduced the tapered spacer, a block that sits between the throttle body and the intake and narrows toward the engine. It does the same job as a plate, restricting airflow and power, but with a shape suited to fuel injection.

The 2019 Daytona 500 was the last race run with restrictor plates. Talladega's spring race that year used the tapered spacer, and the device has been the method of restriction at the superspeedways ever since. The word "plate" survived in the broadcast booth for years after the part had gone.

The eras side by side

Era	Years	How power was restricted	What the racing looked like
Unrestricted	Through 1987	No mandated restriction	Fast and strung out; Elliott's 212.809 mph pole in 1987
Restrictor plate	1988 to February 2019	Plate between carburetor and manifold, later the throttle body	Tight packs, single-car breakaways impossible, the Big One
Tapered spacer, Gen-6 car	2019 to 2021	Tapered spacer above the intake	Similar packs; spacer size adjusted to control speed
Tapered spacer, Next Gen car	2022 onward	Tapered spacer; package revised several times	Packs plus long periods of fuel-saving at part throttle

NASCAR has adjusted the superspeedway package repeatedly since the Next Gen car arrived in 2022, changing the spacer, the spoiler and other aerodynamic parts in search of a balance between close racing and fewer crashes. The exact specifications change, which is why this guide describes the principle rather than a particular horsepower figure. The principle has not moved since 1988: restrict the engine, and the draft becomes the race.

Bump drafting: pushing on the straights, never in the corners

Bump drafting is the next step beyond ordinary drafting. Instead of sitting close behind the car ahead, the trailing driver closes the gap completely and makes contact, bumper to bumper, pushing the lead car forward. The pair is then connected physically as well as aerodynamically, and the trailing car's momentum goes directly into the leader.

Done well, it is the fastest way for two cars to move forward together. Done badly, it starts crashes.

Why the straightaway matters

On a straight, both cars are pointed in the same direction. A push from directly behind sends the lead car straight ahead, which is what both drivers want. In a corner, the cars are turning. The lead car's rear is lighter on the track than it would be on a straight, and a hit from behind that is even slightly off-center turns into a yaw moment, a rotation. The lead car's rear steps out, the car goes sideways, and on a superspeedway, sideways in a pack means the Big One.

Experienced drivers therefore ease off in the corners, let a small gap open, and close it again as both cars straighten out on the backstretch. Some tracks give them almost no room for it. Talladega's tri-oval and Daytona's long dogleg in front of the grandstands are both technically curves, and pushes there have to be gentle.

Square bumpers and pushing off center

The angle of contact matters as much as the location. A push that lands square in the middle of the lead car's rear bumper is relatively safe. A push that lands toward one corner turns the lead car the other way. In a tight pack where the trailing driver cannot see through the car ahead, that alignment is a matter of feel.

How the Next Gen car changed the push

The Next Gen car, introduced for the 2022 season, has a different rear end from any of its predecessors: a composite body, a rear diffuser and a bumper and rear fascia shaped around that underbody. The shape of the front and rear bumpers determines how cleanly two cars line up when they touch. On earlier cars, teams spent years shaping bumpers to match up, which is part of what made the tandem draft possible. On the Next Gen car, NASCAR controls the parts, and the drivers had to relearn how firmly they could push and where.

The early Next Gen superspeedway races produced a run of incidents in which a push on the straight still turned the lead car around, and drivers spoke openly about the car being less forgiving of contact from behind. NASCAR has made changes to the car since then. The underlying rule of thumb has not changed. Push straight, push on the straights, and back off before the turn.

The car itself, from its single-source parts to its independent rear suspension, is explained in our guide to the NASCAR Next Gen car.

Side drafting, the move that works at every oval

Bump drafting needs a superspeedway. Side drafting does not. It works at Charlotte and at Michigan and at Kansas, and it is one of the main reasons a driver who loses a restart can still win the race to the next corner.

The move is simple to describe. Two cars are running side by side down a straightaway. The trailing car, or the car slightly behind, pulls in close to the other car's rear quarter panel. The air coming off the side and front of the attacking car spills onto the rival's rear and disrupts the airflow over its spoiler. The spoiler is what produces much of the car's rear downforce and contributes to its drag profile, and when the air hitting it is turbulent, the rival car slows down slightly.

Slightly is enough. Two cars that were even at the start of the straight are no longer even by the end of it.

What the defending driver can do

Usually, side draft back. The two cars trade air, each slowing the other, and a long exchange often ends with a third car going past both.

Why it shows up on restarts

A restart is a drag race from a standing start at the restart zone. If the car on the inside line gets a better launch, the car on the outside will try to side draft it down the frontstretch to stay level. Watch the cars on a NASCAR restart and the pairs that look as though they are sliding toward one another are usually doing this. The rules of the restart itself, including the choose cone and the two-lap overtime finish, are covered in our explainer on NASCAR overtime rules and green-white-checkered finishes.

It rarely shows on a replay. It can hold off a faster car for a lap or two, and on a short run that is often the race.

Lanes and lines: committed pushers, stalled third lanes, and being hung out to dry

A superspeedway pack organizes itself into lanes. Usually there are two: the bottom line, close to the yellow line on the inside, and the high line, a car width or so up the banking. On the widest tracks a third lane forms between or above them. Each lane is a train of cars running nose to tail, drafting off one another.

A lane is fast only if it is connected. Every car in it is relying on the car behind it to stay close and keep pushing air into the wake, and on the car in front to keep making a hole. If one car in the line drops back by a few feet, the cars behind it lose the draft and the line splits in two.

Why a line needs a committed pusher

The second car in any line is the most important. The leader of a lane is making the hole, but the leader is only fast if the second car commits to staying behind it and pushing. A driver at the front of a lane who looks in the mirror and sees nobody close has no power to defend with. A driver who sees a teammate filling the mirror has a lane.

So drivers think constantly about who is behind them, and whether that driver has a reason to stay there. A pusher who senses that the car ahead will not win, or that another lane is moving faster, may pull out and leave. When that happens late in a race, the leader of the abandoned lane goes backward fast.

How a third lane forms and stalls

It forms when a car pulls out looking for open air and others follow, and for a lap or two it can be the fastest lane on the track. Then it stalls. On the high side it covers more distance around the banking; in the middle it is side drafted from both directions at once. Within a few laps its cars are trying to merge back.

What it means to be hung out to dry

The phrase describes a driver who pulls out of line, looking for a pass, and finds that nobody followed. The driver is now alone in clean air, beside a lane full of drafting cars, and the lane goes past him one car after another. It can cost ten or fifteen positions in a lap. Drivers who have been hung out to dry often end up trying to rejoin the line near the back, which is where most of the trouble in a pack happens.

So drivers wait late in a race for someone else to move first. Moving first is the only way to win, and the quickest way to lose.

The tandem draft of the early 2010s and how NASCAR broke it up

For roughly two seasons, beginning in late 2010 and running through 2011 into 2012, superspeedway racing looked completely different. The cars stopped running in a pack and started running in pairs.

The tandem draft was bump drafting extended over an entire lap. One car pushed the other, nose to tail, not just on the straights but through the corners as well, and the pair ran faster than any pack could. The combination of a newly repaved Daytona surface in 2011, which gave enormous grip, and bumpers on the car of the time that lined up well, made it possible to push through the turns without turning the leader around.

Two cars together could catch and pass a long line of cars by themselves. Races became sequences of pairs, each one working a partner and trying to find another pair to leapfrog.

What the tandem did to the racing

The 2011 Daytona 500 was won by Trevor Bayne, then 20 years old, in the Wood Brothers Ford. The April 2011 Talladega race finished with the two-thousandths-of-a-second margin described at the top of this page, which tied what was then the closest finish in NASCAR's electronic timing record. The finishes were close. Plenty of fans hated it anyway, because two cars stuck together for a lap were not racing each other, and the pushing driver could see nothing but his partner's bumper. Drivers communicated over the radio to coordinate swaps, because the pushing car's engine overheated after a few laps with its grille pressed against the leader's bumper, and the two had to change places.

The changes that ended it

NASCAR attacked the tandem from several directions over 2011 and 2012:

• Cooling. It reduced the size of the grille opening and changed the rules on the engine cooling system so that a pushing car overheated faster. A car that could only push for a lap or two before swapping was a car that could not push for long.
• Radio. It limited the radio channels drivers could use to talk directly to one another, so that pairs could not arrange swaps as easily.
• Aerodynamics. It adjusted the aerodynamic package to change the air around a pushing car and make the pair less stable.

None of those changes alone ended the tandem. Together, and with the introduction of the Gen-6 car in 2013, they returned superspeedway racing to the pack. The tandem has not come back in its full form, and the Next Gen car's bumpers make it unlikely that it will.

Whether the tandem was worse than the pack is still argued in garages. The pack produces more cars in contention and a more uncertain race; the tandem produced fewer large crashes. NASCAR chose the pack. The Big One section below explains what that decision costs.

Manufacturer alliances: why Fords push Fords, and where it ends

Three manufacturers raced in the Cup Series through the 2026 season: Chevrolet, Ford and Toyota. At most tracks, the manufacturer link matters in engineering and technical support, not on the track itself. At Daytona and Talladega it matters in the race.

A driver in a pack needs a pusher. A pusher needs a reason to push. The simplest reason is shared interest: if a Ford wins, Ford wins, and the Ford teams share information, engines, and in many cases engineering resources. So the manufacturers organize their drivers, and the drivers organize themselves, to work with cars of the same make.

How it shows up during a race

Before the race, the drivers of each make meet with their manufacturer's representatives. They agree to draft together where possible. On the track, a Ford driver pulling out of line will look first for another Ford to go with him.

The alliances also show up on pit road. Pit stops are a moment of danger at a superspeedway, because a car that stops alone and rejoins alone is a car without a draft. If the Fords pit together, they leave pit road together and can form a line immediately, returning to speed faster than a car on its own. So teams coordinate stops by make, sometimes arriving on pit road in a group of five or six cars at once under green.

Where the cooperation ends

Teammates come before the make, and both come a distant second to winning. On the last lap the pusher behind the leader is waiting for the moment to pull out and go, and the leader knows it. A driver alone will also push a car of any brand if that is the only fast line available.

Fuel saving in the pack: why the field now runs at part throttle

In the plate era, superspeedway races were mostly flat out. That changed with the Next Gen car, and it is one of the larger shifts in how these races look on television.

The reason is fuel. A car running in the draft burns less fuel than a car running in clean air, because it needs less throttle to hold the same speed. A car that saves fuel can run longer before it has to pit. A car that runs longer can make one fewer stop in a stage or a race, or can pit at a better moment, and at a superspeedway, where pit stops are when a car is most likely to lose the draft, that is a significant advantage.

What it looks like from the grandstand

For long stretches of a Next Gen superspeedway race, the field runs single file or two wide at speeds well below what the cars could manage. Drivers ease off the throttle to save fuel, and they do it together, because a driver who tries to push harder only uses more fuel without escaping the pack.

The single-file line can run for dozens of laps. Then something breaks it: a stage ending, a pit cycle, the final laps of the race. At that point the field goes back to full speed and full aggression all at once, which is one reason why superspeedway crashes cluster near the end of stages and the end of the race.

Why it changed strategy

Fuel saving turned superspeedway races into a strategic contest. Teams calculate how many laps each car can run, how many stops it needs, and whether a car can make it to the end of a stage on the fuel it has. Pit stops are timed to the fuel window more than to tire wear, since tires are rarely the limiting factor at Daytona or Talladega.

It also changed the role of the stages, since the end of a stage offers points and the chance to pit under caution. The way those points work, and why teams sometimes give them up for track position, is covered in our guide to how NASCAR stage racing works.

The single-file stretches are the least popular feature of the Next Gen superspeedway race, and the package revisions since 2022 have been aimed partly at them. They have not gone away.

The Big One: why one mistake collects a dozen cars

The name came from the drivers themselves. Everybody racing at Daytona and Talladega knows that at some point in the race, there will probably be a crash involving a large part of the field. They call it the Big One, and they plan around it.

The mechanism is not complicated. Forty cars running inches apart at close to full speed, two and three wide, have no room to react. When one car is turned sideways, by a bad push or contact in a corner or a cut tire, the cars directly behind it have perhaps a fraction of a second to respond. They cannot brake hard enough to stop, because the cars behind them will hit them. They cannot swerve, because there are cars beside them. So they hit the spinning car, or each other, and the cars behind them do the same.

1. 1The triggerOne car is turned sideways by a push in a corner, a block that goes wrong or a cut tire.
2. 2The first contactThe cars directly behind have no room to stop or steer around the spinning car and hit it or each other.
3. 3The spreadThe crash fans out across all lanes as cars that were side by side are pushed into each other.
4. 4The smokeTire smoke fills the track and drivers arriving from behind cannot see where the wreck is or which way to go.
5. 5The cautionNASCAR throws the yellow flag and, if the track is blocked, the red flag to stop the race.
6. 6The cleanupSurviving cars return to pit road, damaged cars go to the damaged vehicle clock or the garage, and the race resumes.

A typical sequence, not a description of any single crash. Smoke from spinning cars often hides the wreck from drivers arriving behind it.

Why it collects so many

Two factors make the Big One worse at superspeedways than at any other kind of track. The first is the pack. At a short track, a crash collects the cars around it, but the field is spread out enough that most cars can avoid it. At Daytona or Talladega, there might be twenty cars within a few hundred feet.

The second is smoke. A spinning car throws up tire smoke, and the cars arriving behind it drive into a cloud with no idea where the crashed cars are. Drivers often say they could see nothing at all for a second or two, and a car at superspeedway pace covers more than 250 feet every second, so that is a long time.

Why drivers ride at the back

Some drivers deliberately run at the back of the pack for most of a superspeedway race. The logic is that the Big One usually happens in the middle of the pack, where the cars are most tightly bunched. A driver at the back has room to slow down or steer away. Once the crash has happened, the field is smaller, and the driver can move forward into the gaps it left.

The cost is stage points, and a long climb through the field if the Big One never comes.

The flags NASCAR uses during and after a crash, from the yellow to the red, are covered in our guide to what each NASCAR flag means.

Blocking and the last-lap run

The leader at the white flag at Daytona or Talladega is often not the winner. The leader is the car making the hole in the air, which means the leader is the car without a draft. Every car behind has a draft, and on the last lap, every car behind is trying to use it.

So the leader has to defend. The tool for defending is the block: moving into the path of a car that is closing, so that it has to back off or go around. Blocking at a superspeedway is a matter of timing and nerve.

1. 1White flagThe leader takes the white flag with a line of cars behind and usually another line alongside.
2. 2Building the runThe second car in line, pushed by the cars behind, closes on the leader's bumper on the backstretch.
3. 3The pull-outThe attacker pulls out to the inside or outside, looking for a side draft or open air to pass.
4. 4The blockThe leader moves across to cover the lane the attacker has chosen, trying to take the air away.
5. 5The counterThe attacker switches lanes or the leader misjudges, and the two cars touch or the block fails.
6. 6The finishEither the leader holds on to the line or a car with a run passes in the tri-oval, often by inches.

A common pattern on the final lap at Daytona or Talladega. Real finishes vary with how many lines are running and who is pushing whom.

The block that goes wrong

A block that comes too late is how many last-lap crashes start. The leader moves across, but the attacker is already alongside. The two cars touch, and one of them goes sideways. In April 2009 at Talladega, Carl Edwards blocked Brad Keselowski at the end of the race, made contact, and his car went airborne into the catch fence. Keselowski won his first Cup race.

The yellow line rule

At Daytona and Talladega, a double yellow line marks the inside edge of the racing surface. Drivers who go below it to improve their position are penalized. On the last lap, that means a driver who dives below the line to make a pass will lose it. In October 2008 at Talladega, Regan Smith passed Tony Stewart below the yellow line on the final lap and crossed the finish line first. NASCAR awarded the win to Stewart. The rule is unforgiving and it is enforced, and it means a driver blocked against the inside line has nowhere to go.

A leader who blocks one lane opens up the other, and the run peaks at the line. The pattern is part of why the Daytona 500 produces so many first-time and surprise winners, a thread followed through the race's history in our guide to the Daytona 500's traditions and trophies.

Drafting away from the superspeedways: Atlanta and the intermediate ovals

For years, the draft was a story about two tracks. That changed in 2022, when Atlanta Motor Speedway reopened after a reprofile that turned a worn 1.54-mile oval into something closer to a small superspeedway.

The track was repaved, narrowed, and its banking increased from 24 degrees to 28. NASCAR began running Atlanta with the superspeedway package, and the result was pack racing on a track roughly 1 mile shorter than Daytona. The pack at Atlanta runs tighter and the laps come around faster, and the racing has the same character as Daytona and Talladega: two- and three-wide drafting, pushes, side drafts, and the Big One. The geography of the pack is just compressed.

The draft at intermediate ovals

At the 1.5-mile tracks such as Charlotte, Kansas and Las Vegas, and at the two-mile Michigan and the Auto Club oval in its day, the draft is present but secondary. Drivers have to lift or brake for the corners, which spreads the field out. Handling decides who is fast, and a car that handles well through the turns can pull away from a car that is drafting behind it.

The draft still matters on the straights. A trailing car can close on the one ahead and use a side draft to attack on a restart. But the pack does not form, and a car that falls out of line is not cut adrift as it would be at Talladega.

Short tracks and road courses

At the short tracks under a mile and at the road courses, the draft hardly matters at all. Speeds are too low and the straights too short for the effect to change the outcome. A driver at Martinsville or on the Charlotte Roval is fighting with brakes and tires, not with air.

That is why superspeedway racing is treated as a separate discipline, one where drivers with modest records elsewhere win and dominant ones struggle. The broader rules that apply at every one of these tracks are set out in our overview of NASCAR rules from stages to charters, and the rest of American racing has its own section on the motorsport hub.