March 8, 2001
By Allen Madding
Another 1.5-mile cookie cutter race track, another less than compelling three hour race.
At several points there was a separation of ten seconds between the leader and the second place car on Saturday during the NASCAR Nationwide event and Sunday’s NASCAR Sprint Cup Kobalt Tools 400 was not much different.
The absence of side-by-side racing leaves many fans feeling less than fulfilled after the intensity of racing we saw in the season’s first two races at Daytona and Phoenix. Several fans noted that it was a high speed parade.
With corner entry speeds at many of the 1.5-mile tracks approaching and at a few tracks, exceeding 200 miles an hour, one has to wonder how long it will be before NASCAR has to begin contemplating the use of restrictor plates at tracks other than the two
Superspeedways employing them now. As the speeds have increased on these tracks, the competitive door-to-door racing has declined.
In an effort to try to reduce the cost of exotic materials in the engine valve trains a couple of years ago, NASCAR implemented gear restrictions to try and hold down the escalating RPMs. But even with the gear rules in place, this weekend we saw teams using gear combinations that were producing as much as 9,300 RPMs entering the turns. While a considerable amount of teams selected a gear combination to keep their engines at or below a maximum of 9,000 RPMs, there were still several teams stretching 9,100 to 9,300 RPMs at the end of the straight-aways. 9,300 RPMs is asking a lot from a pushrod small block V-8, and to that end, we saw at least one engine running those high RPMs -- suffer engine failure during Sunday’s 400-miler.
One question that continues to come to mind is why does NASCAR continue to utilize the 358 cubic inch displacement V-8? With speeds escalating at the one-mile and larger racetracks, it would seem to make more logical sense to contemplate reducing the cubic inches to something 75 to 100 cubic inches smaller than to have to utilize restrictor plates on two-thirds of the tracks where the Cup Series competes.
This is not a foreign concept. In the 1970s, NASCAR temporarily implemented restrictor plates before mandating a reduction in cubic inches from 450-460 cubic inch engines of the day to the current 358 cubic inch limit. They re-implemented restrictor plates on the 358 cubic inch engines at Talladega and Daytona after cars began getting airborne in the 1980s.
In fact, I have made this suggestion to reduce the cubic inches several times in the past. In May 2007, in “Slowing Speeds Safely”, I suggested 280-300 cubic inch engines after NASCAR asked Goodyear to produce a harder tire for Charlotte Motor Speedway to slow the cars down.
In May 2009, in “What Should Be Done About NASCAR’s Superspeedways?”, I suggested 283 or 300 cubic inch engines with 390cfm carburetors after concern was once again raised over airborne cars at Tallageda and Daytona.
And again in November 2009, when concern was raised about airborne cars due to bump drafting, I once again submitted the suggestion of smaller cubic inch engines in “Is it Time to Abandon Talladega and Daytona?”
Bear in mind that the issue of airborne cars has now cropped up at tracks other than Daytona and Talladega. Remember the Kobalt Tools 500 at Atlanta March 2010? Brad Keselowski No. 12 Dodge went airborne and slammed down on the roof after contact with Carl Edwards. The airborne cars suddenly were at the 1.5-mile tracks coincidently right where the speed entering the corner was at 200 mph.
Engine displacement should have been reduced 25 years ago. It is the solution that is way overdue in Sprint Cup Racing.
The thoughts and ideas expressed by this writer or any other writer on Insider Racing News, are not necessarily the views of the staff and/or management of IRN.
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