April 14, 2011
By Guest Columnist PattyKay Lilley 
PattyKay
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Well gentle readers, this weekend we're off to Talladega, which means it's time for my annual rant. To be perfectly honest, the track scares me to death! At the beginning of the race, I say a prayer (I do that for every race), then take a deep breath at the green flag and exhale when the checkers fly. The speeds don’t frighten me. Certainly, no one can be a race fan and fear speed. Rather, it's the tight pack of cars, stacked four wide and ten deep for 500 miles, with the fast cars being unable to pull away from the slower ones. One mistake by one driver results in a huge multi-car accident that we've come to know as "The big one." That situation is the direct result of that diabolical invention known to race fans as the restrictor plate.
Let's talk about restrictor plates for a while. Raise your hand if you can remember Daytona and Talladega without them. I don't think that too many hands are waving. For those who have never seen "real" Superspeedway racing, let me tell you now that you have missed something special.
Back in the 1980's, or the dark ages as some see it, those not so stock "stock cars" were circling the big tracks at well over 200 mph, and thrilling race fans with the blinding speed. There was a huge difference however. Back then, racing was about speed, and the fastest car won, for the most part. Take a good look at the 2.66 mile high banked track that is Talladega and picture this: A young Bill Elliott, in 1985, going two laps down to the field then making up both laps without the benefit of a caution. That's right. Under green flag conditions, he just caught and passed the field twice. That, my friends, is fast!
To be sure, you did not see a pack of 40+ cars glued together for 500 miles. That's not racing, that's insanity, and I don't think you'll find a driver on the circuit that looks forward to it, if they are honest with you. So what happened that caused Superspeedway racing to change so drastically?
In 1987, Bobby Allison spun his car, with a little help from his friends, and took it airborne into the catch-fence at Talladega. Thankfully, although some debris did make it to the grandstand, the wire held. That would say to me that the problem had more to do with cars simulating flight than with the speed at which they travel. Common sense however, is not always on the menu at the NASCAR restaurant.
The 1988 Daytona 500 saw the introduction of the restrictor plate, which is nothing more than a piece of metal with four holes in it, placed between the ever so obsolete carburetor and the manifold, to restrict the flow of air to the engine. (For the purists among us, I do know that they had been used a long time before that, but sanity prevailed that time.)
That same Daytona race saw Richard Petty launch his STP colors into the catch fence, spraying parts and pieces into the grandstand, then roll it some 15 times, in a truly frightening crash. It looked for all the world like that dang plate hadn't worked!
NASCAR's answer to that was to mandate an even smaller restrictor plate. I told you there was no logic in this! In the early 90's, someone came up with a wonderful idea that actually worked well. They designed roof flaps that are activated by the air current created when a car gets backwards, and very effectively keep the car from going airborne. That should have solved the problem, but remember, we are dealing with NASCAR here. The roof flaps worked just fine, but the plates stayed. Over the years, NASCAR has tried all sorts of things to counteract the plates and make the racing the way it used to be, but all to no avail. We've seen many changes in the size of the openings in the plates, and all sorts of aero packages have come and gone. A variety of springs and/or shocks have been tried and done away with, but the cars still run in tightly bunched packs, with a fast car unable, for lack of horsepower, to pull away from a slow car in his draft.
Another "fix" was the mandating of smaller fuel cells, necessitating frequent pit stops. The theory behind that brilliant move was that more pit stops would break up the huge and dangerous pack of cars, however the drivers are not stupid. No one pits alone, since drafting partners are a necessary thing, so we see large packs of cars all pitting together. The pits can be a very dangerous place, and with this new "rule”, they get to go there twice as often. Once the cars return to the track they are just sucked right back together by the draft. If there is a move toward safety in all that, I fail to see it.
At the beginning of this year, compliments of a new nose on the still ugly COT and a new dress on Lady Daytona, the drivers figured out something that I'm sure never occurred to NASCAR, and to be honest, it never occurred to me either. Seems that two cars...not three or more, but only two...travel at faster speeds in this configuration than that massive snarling pack is able to achieve. Drivers aren't as stupid as some think, so when practicing for Daytona, they began trying something out, and we saw the result in the Daytona 500. Now, instead of racing, they are dancing, and not with the stars, but with each other. (And the dance is not limited to teammates, but to anyone that will push or pull you. As anyone my age would say, "That ain't racin'." Real racing at the giant tracks has gone from the sublime to the insane and finally to the just plain ridiculous.
Okay! Exit logic and enter truth. It was never about safety at all. It was all about insurance. It seems that their insurer told NASCAR that either the cars slowed to less than 200 mph or the insurer took a hike. Of course, the cars slowed down, but the racing suffered greatly as a result. After 23 years of spoiled races at the two giant tracks, isn't it time to try something different? (I know I will receive mail telling me how great it is to watch those huge packs of cars, running four wide for 500 miles. Forget it! I can tell you are not a driver)
There's an answer to the problem, and other than obstinacy on the part of NASCAR, I can't imagine why it hasn't been employed. It's all about the aerodynamics, and always has been. Mikey Waltrip once called for a simple raising of the front air dams at tracks like Atlanta and Texas, saying that a few inches there would cut speeds by some 20 miles per hour. That probably wouldn't be sufficient on the two largest tracks, but coupled with larger spoilers and some square corners to upset the airflow, I think they could easily get to where they want to be and lose those dang plates. (The Craftsman Truck Series runs unrestricted at Daytona) I have long said, and only half jokingly, that if they just sent the drivers out in any model (or replica thereof) from the early 1970's, there is no way on earth for them to exceed 200 mph. Surely, these cars have come so far from "stock" that it's immaterial what configuration they appear in.
Here's another idea that you might want to toy with for a moment. Once upon a time, they were called "stock" cars because that's what they were. What would happen if we just returned to that? What if, just like in the old days, you could take a car straight from the showroom floor to the racetrack? Well, as nice as that seems, it won't work altogether. Safety has to be a prime consideration and the cars would have to be outfitted with the proper roll bars, seating, roof flaps, belt mountings, etc. By all means! Use it all! Any measure that promotes driver safety should be employed without question. If we were looking at stock bodies, with, heaven forbid, stock engines, wouldn't that solve all the problems? There isn’t a stock Ford, Chevy, Dodge, or Toyota that will go 200 miles an hour. Furthermore, they don’t approach the aerodynamic perfection that their cloned cousins boast these days. If we want to watch perfectly sleek, tricked up cars with mega-power, we have F1 and the IZOD IndyCars. As for me, I think that putting the "stock" back in stock cars would be fun.
I'm sure there are those among you, with the degrees and expertise that I lack, who have even better ideas of how to slow the cars without choking down the engine and forcing the cars to remain in those large and dangerous packs or dancing in the daylight. Wouldn't you think that the brain trust that is NASCAR could think of one or two? Mr. Helton, Sir, with all due respect, plates are for eating supper from, not for racing.
Be well gentle readers, and remember to keep smiling. It looks so good on you!
~PattyKay Lilley
Racer's Reunion
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