The tweets and e-mails came rolling in as early as Lap 2 of Sunday's race at Talladega.
Restrictor-plate racing is the worst racing ever!
These smaller plates NASCAR made them run this weekend aren't working!
Talladega is a joke ... and so is the Car of Tomorrow!
As much as I would love to sit here and tell you that these cries for change are unique to fans of Sunday's Amp Energy 500, which put two cars on their roofs and wrapped up Jimmie Johnson's fourth straight title in a pretty blue ribbon, they aren't.
In fact, the loudest pleas for change came from within the garages, as drivers climbed out of their mounts covered in sweat, their veins still coursing with adrenaline. They talked about larger plates, smaller plates, different cars, different rules, coffins and bulldozers. But despite their passion, they presented little new in the way of theories on how to "fix" racing at the Talladega Superspeedway.
So, what are the most common thoughts on how to fix things? And what are the potential problems in implementing them? Read ahead, my fellow frustrated fans.
Solution No. 1: Take Off The Restrictor Plates
Biggest Proponent: Dale Earnhardt Sr.
Biggest Opponent: Physics
For those of you who don't know, the restrictor plate is a hamburger-sized plate of metal placed atop the carburetor to restrict the amount of air that can make its way into the engine. That creates a ceiling horsepower and speed, preventing any one car from taking off and leaving the others behind. Thus, the large packs of machines we see riding around Talladega at 190 mph.
The plates were put in place after Bobby Allison's horrifying 1987 Talladega crash, a wreck that came dangerously close to landing in the middle of the grandstand. Since then, the plates have been modified on a nearly race-by-race basis. For Sunday's race, the holes in the plate were reduced to slow the cars down in the aftermath of Carl Edwards' Allison-like crash back this past spring.
But people hate 'em. No one more than the drivers. Earnhardt, who was the career leader in plate wins at the time of his death in 2001, was also the plate's loudest critic. "They need to take the damn things off," he said to me in 2000 shortly before his final career win at Talladega. "I hear guys say we'll be going too fast. Hell, we're race car drivers. If you don't want to go fast, then you should probably go do something else for a living."
But just how fast would they go without the plates? "Probably 230 miles an hour," says Ken Schrader, who had an airborne flip of his own at Talladega in 1995. "I have no doubts that these drivers are good enough to control where the car is going to go at 230, but they can't control where it's going to land at 230."
Solution No. 2: Reconfigure Talladega
Biggest Proponent: Benny Parsons
Biggest Opponent: Talladega
The Talladega Superspeedway was built by NASCAR founder Bill France Sr. (read a great story on its origins by Ed Hinton here) to be the biggest, baddest racing circuit in the world.
Mission accomplished.
But at 2.66 miles, with six-story banking in the turns, is it too bad? The late Benny Parsons, the 1973 Cup series champion and longtime ESPN analyst, used to argue me to the ground on this topic. "Bulldozers are the only answer down there," he told me at least a dozen times. "Flatten the banking and make it a giant flat track. The draft will still come into play, the speeds will still be high, but we won't be launching cars into the air anymore."
On Sunday afternoon Jimmie Johnson had BP's back. When asked by the media after the race what he thought was the solution to making Talladega racing safer, he shot back, "Tractors, to knock down the banking."
So, here are the problems with that. First, as much as fans like to complain about plate races at Daytona and Talladega, they also show up in droves and watch and listen by the millions because these races have a reputation for excitement. Second, refiguring the track would cost, oh, I don't know, bazillions? And did I mention that the track was built by the France family?
Solution No. 3: Revamp Antiairborne Devices
Biggest Proponent: Ryan Newman
Biggest Opponent: No one, really
In 1994, NASCAR introduced a revolutionary little pair of metal flaps to the roof of each car that were angled so that when a car got sideways or backward, they would pop up and create enough aerodynamic drag to push the 3,400-pound vehicles back down on their wheels. In the years since, NASCAR also has added small strips of metal, or roof rails, along the roof line and another smaller set of flaps at the base of the windshield to keep cars from turning into an aerofoil as soon as they got off their usual nose-forward axis. Here's a much more detailed explanation from Stock Car Science.
But since Edwards' flip, demand has started growing for revisions to those systems. The loudest cries since April have come from Newman, whose wreck on Sunday only furthered his cause. As recently as Friday, the Purdue engineering grad was saying that the flaps needed to be resized and reconfigured for the new, bulkier Cup car model.
"I would assume they just adapted their principles and the locations of the old-style car to this new-style car," he said earlier in the week. "But this car punches a totally different type of hole in the air."
Furthermore, as driver turned ESPN analyst Dale Jarrett pointed out during Sunday's telecast, the Cup car's giant rear wing is what appeared to launch Newman's car into the air when it ended up traveling backward at 190 mph.
NASCAR Sprint Cup Series official John Darby addressed this issue at Daytona in July, saying the new flaps on the new car were bigger and that the Research and Development Center had conducted multiple "liftoff" tests in the wind tunnel during the Cup car's development phase. And in NASCAR's defense, Edwards' car was actually being brought back down to the track in the spring, but was sent back into the air by -- here he is again -- Newman.
"Might be time to revisit that," says Kevin Harvick, who had a front-row seat for Newman's flip Sunday.
Might be time to revisit a lot of stuff regarding Talladega. We haven't even gotten into removing the rear wing and bringing back the spoiler, using bigger tires, adding more aerodynamic ground effects or adding more can't-pass zones.
I just don't know where to start.
Ryan McGee
