| By Marty Smith, NASCAR.COM
May 3, 2005
03:18 PM EDT (19:18 GMT)
The look of disgust on Mark Martin's face perfectly summed up the general consensus regarding The Huge One. He, along with 24 other drivers, wanted terribly to be incensed at someone, something. Anything. But there was nothing tangible upon which to unleash the fury. It's plate racing, and most drivers involved placed blame on the dynamics therein. But Kyle Busch put it on Jimmie Johnson; and Sterling Marlin put it on Dale Earnhardt Jr. Both drivers played a role in the melee, and I think Larry McReynolds nailed it during the network broadcast, when he said something like this: If four distinct circumstances don't simultaneously occur, that wreck doesn't happen. It's a sum-of-all-parts deal. And because of it, parts were strewn from Turn 1 to Tallapoosa. Most fans disagree with me. Many fans blame Johnson, saying he crowded and rubbed and blocked Mike Wallace, and because of it wound up triggering Armageddon. Others blame Earnhardt, saying he gave Wallace a colonoscopy instead of a bump draft. I can't pinpoint who's at fault, here, so I sought guidance from some folks who watched Sunday's Aaron's 499 from the best vantage point possible -- the spotter stand. Some ardently blamed Johnson. Some ardently blamed Earnhardt. Some said, "It's plate racing, what do you expect?" Imagine that. Depends where one's allegiances lie, I reckon. (All I know for sure is that it produced one of the greatest quotes of all time: "They need a tissue for their issue, I reckon." -- Dale Jr.) Looked to me like consummate plate racing: One guy (Johnson) in the middle of a 40-car pack bobbles, shifts, blocks, whatever. Another (Wallace) swerves or checks up, runs out of room and body slams someone else (Riggs), while another (Earnhardt) runs into him from behind. All hell breaks loose. Millions of dollars in equipment is destroyed. The world is livid. We all know the big wreck is pretty much inevitable. Regardless of how clean and green the first part of the race is, it's only a matter of time. Guys get antsy and lose patience when it's go-time. The cars are too close for too long and bogged down by restricted motors, making for a dangerous dynamic. It's captivating for fans. Drivers hate it. Should NASCAR do something about it? Take off the plates? Alter the cars aerodynamically? Install smaller engines? Make the tires softer and narrower? Knock down the banking and reconfigure the tracks? Or worse yet, should NASCAR consider removing Daytona and Talladega from the schedule until an alternative solution is found for the restrictor plate?  |  | | A tangle of cars at Talladega Credit: AP |
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No. That's ludicrous. Both tracks sell out and host four of the season's biggest, most suspenseful events. To borrow a line from 50 Cent (sort of), fans love Talladega like a fat kid loves cake. Then again, we're not getting wrecked at 190 mph. There are ways to slow the cars down without using carburetor restrictor plates, but NASCAR doesn't seem very proactive in the search for a new solution. The answer is finding a way to force the drivers to lift, to make them get off the gas and force the cars to handle. Know this: restricted motors are used to ensure fan safety as much as driver safety, if not more. The threat of a car getting airborne and taking out a grandstand is a major concern. Believe that. mcmurrayfan: Considering it isn't likely either one of those tracks are going to disappear from the schedule, the better choice would be to find a solution to the restrictor plates. There are several things that could be done to separate the packs and they should all be looked at strongly. Of course, if and when they separate the packs at the two tracks, ticket sales would go down dramatically. The real choice is this: racing or entertainment. If they choose racing, something needs to get done. If they choose entertainment, nothing needs to change. Ganassi pegs it with this response. Why would NASCAR be hell-bent to find another method to slow down the cars? The entertainment value of putting 43 drivers in a tenuous situation for 500 miles is astounding. Few venues produce 500 full miles of heart-pumping action. The plate tracks do, which is evidenced by the fact that Talladega had its largest crowd ever last Sunday. Of course, some fans disagree that plate racing is any more exciting than the intermediate tracks: JenniferO: I do not know if these races should be done away with or not. The racing is not very fun to watch, usually I just do something else. But you have to think about the drivers safety. How many times have we seen the "Big One". Someone is going to get hurt very bad one day. Now I know that King Jr. and Waltrip do very well at these tracks but it is not all about those two. I would hate to see either one of them get hurt. Do not get me wrong I really like both drivers. So basically do not get rid of the races unless they cannot be fixed. Otherwise, fix them. SAFETY FIRST. I love Jennie-O turkey burgers. Tasty. Anyway, true it is that safety should come first. And to NASCAR's credit, they've greatly improved the safety of this sport since Dale Earnhardt died in the 2001 Daytona 500. But that doesn't change the fact that plate racing is still inherently dangerous. After sliding down the front straightaway on his lid, Casey Mears was madder than Bobby Knight at halftime. I don't blame him. Once he stopped, he sat upside down for a couple minutes, which can't be comfortable. Readers submitted myriad ways to solve the restrictor-plate conundrum: gogregbiffle: Yes. They should consider it. It might spark them into getting serious about finding a better alternative when they think of the possible fan reaction. Any time I've brought up the idea of using 6-cylinder engines (or as few cylinders as required to bring the speeds into the right range), on fan boards I've been told that it would never work because it would be too expensive to build completely different cars for the different engine. Well, would it really be more expensive than replace up to 4, completely destroyed plate-track cars every year? And aren't the plate cars and plate engines already special, purpose-built cars and engines that run no other tracks? And wouldn't a solution that actually worked be worth it? A totaled car is roughly $250,000, Nicole. So if a driver totaled four speedway cars in a season, that's roughly $1 million. The research and development alone involved in creating a V-6 engine would top that figure. "The associated cost for an alternative engine program would far outweigh the car replacement costs," said Jeff Andrews, head engine builder at Hendrick Motorsports. "While plate engines are different in camshaft and cylinder heads, manifold etc, many of the components are interchangeable (block, etc). With the current minimum component weights (pistons, rods, wrist pins) now imposed by NASCAR, we actually take some of our engine inventory after Daytona, and with some key component changes convert to open engines for the rest of the season. "The V-6 Busch program in the 80's and early 90's was very expensive to teams, largely due to the fact that the Busch Series could not benefit from the development costs spent by Cup teams simply because the engines were so different. "Today, many of the things we development for Cup transfer directly to Busch. Having different engine configurations in the same series would be very costly." BJONE: Remove them from the schedule? Are you serious? I don't know what it looks like from the stands at 'Dega or Daytona, but on TV the racing action is nothing short of awesome. So there was a 25-car pile up. Yeah, and? Gives us something to talk about on Monday doesn't it? |
| Talladega Toll |
| Cars involved in the Lap 132 crash in the Aaron's 499 |
| Car No. |
Driver |
| 0 |
Mike Bliss |
| 01 |
Joe Nemechek |
| 07 |
Dave Blaney |
| 09 |
Johnny Sauter |
| 2 |
Rusty Wallace |
| 5 |
Kyle Busch |
| 6 |
Mark Martin |
| 9 |
Kasey Kahne |
| 10 |
Scott Riggs |
| 11 |
Jason Leffler |
| 12 |
Ryan Newman |
| 17 |
Matt Kenseth |
| 18 |
Bobby Labonte |
| 21 |
Ricky Rudd |
| 22 |
Scott Wimmer |
| 23 |
Mike Skinner |
| 25 |
Brian Vickers |
| 32 |
Bobby Hamilton Jr. |
| 33 |
Kerry Earnhardt |
| 36 |
Boris Said |
| 40 |
Sterling Marlin |
| 41 |
Casey Mears |
| 43 |
Jeff Green |
| 99 |
Carl Edwards |
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What restrictor plate races give us is nose-to-tail, side-by-side, three-wide racing. What's not to like? Oh wait, we don't like it when our favorite driver gets wiped out in "The Big One." Any one of those guys out there will tell you that wrecking is all part of racing whether it's at California, Bristol or in this case 'Dega & Daytona. Now if you're talking about an alternative to the restrictor plate, how about some method to slow them down with a strictly enforced Aero package instead? Something similar to the luggage racks on the Busch cars? Or possibly a spec'd transmission and rear end gearing package that will force reduced speed? Several folks shared Surhoff's suggestion that an aerodynamic alteration is the best alternative to restrictor plates. But the roof blade is not -- I repeat, not -- the answer. The warp-speed closing rate often takes Nextel Cup drivers by surprise, much less 20-year-old plate first-timers in a Busch Series machine. Groucho97: Talladega and Daytona need to stay on the schedule. The restrictor plates are what need to be removed. If drivers are afraid to drive 200+ mph on those tracks, they need to sit those races out. In my opinion it is ridiculous to do anything to slow these cars down. I'm paying to see these drivers go as fast as they can. Talladega claims to be "The World's Fastest Superspeedway." This is not true. Atlanta is the fastest track on circuit. The worst thing about NASCAR is restrictor plates. I'd pay to see this guy say that to Rusty Wallace's face. Wallace tested an unrestricted car last year at Talladega, hit 228 mph, then said there wasn't enough ching in the world to convince him to race unrestricted with 42 other cars. Here's why: Sactown3fan8: No! Races at Daytona and Talladega are extremely exciting to watch from the safety of my couch at home. The carnage at these tracks, while at times is caused by a cut tire or other mechanical malfunction, is for the most part caused by the drivers themselves. There has to be another way to break up the packs of cars. The small fuel cell idea is lame. Cars are on pit road to often. Dump the tracks and you take even more excitement away from a sport that is beginning to resemble F-1 parade races. Cuttino Mobley is correct about one thing: the drivers themselves cause as many multi-car wrecks as part failures do, if not more. That's why these packs are so daunting. Riding along in 21st position is tolerable for 400 miles; but as the laps wind down, the aggression ratchets up. Considerably. |  | | Fans watch as cars speed by at Talladega Credit: Streeter Lecka/Getty Images |
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Guys get frustrated at the inability to pass and start creating holes in places they wouldn't have earlier in the race. By the 50-to-go mark, patience is running out. Go-time officially begins, and inevitably, so does the wrecking. "This is a tough one," Martin said following the Aaron's 499. "You just have to hope when you come here that you're in the right place to miss those things. The drivers have done a fabulous job of preventing that to happen; but the longer you run, the more you need to race the more it's likely to happen. "Unless you're really, really lucky, you're gonna have that no matter how good the drivers behave themselves. They're just in a situation where that's so likely to happen that it's hard to get a race and not have it." zzx36r: No, I do not think these races should be removed from the schedule. However there needs to be drastic changes made to the cars. There was some talk a few years back about trying a 350 cfm carb. This would give the drivers a little more throttle response over the current restrictor plate and allow them to pass and spread out a little more. I also think the aero packages should be looked into. Benny Parsons suggested standing the windshields up and maybe a little less spoiler would get the "driver" back into the mix. If we wanted to watch a slot car race, I suppose we could get on the floor with our 8 year old kids and do so. The current rules create a boring and dangerous race. When 20 of 43 cars are out of the race at the end is very disappointing. Ben Blake, a columnist for SPEED Channel's website, has long crusaded for an old-school aero package, citing the Craftsman Truck Series as proof positive that big, boxy vehicles that punch an Empire State Building-sized hole in the air make for better racing. Makes sense. The Truck Series is the best racing NASCAR has to offer, and they don't use restrictor plates on superspeedways. Thing is, how would one go about achieving this bigger, boxier body in a remotely cost-efficient manner? A buddy of mine from home suggested putting a clear Lexan spoiler across the nose of the cars. I'm no aerodynamicist, so I couldn't tell you if that's even feasible. But it sounds cool and easily done. Another of my colleagues -- David Poole of the Charlotte Observer -- says the answer is to reconfigure the tracks by knocking down the banking. Daytona and Talladega are both International Speedway Corp. venues. They have the money. Bcblythe: That is laughable. Whether NASCAR will ever admit it or not, the wrecks are their greatest advertising tool. Just wait for the next Talladega race and you will see my point. I guarantee you will see the huge wreck in the promos for the race over and over again. They will milk it for everything it is worth. Undoubtedly so. Whether or we want to admit it, watching our heroes defy logic and walk away waving is part of the appeal, part of the overall scope of what keeps us glued to the tube. Last Lap appears on NASCAR.COM every Tuesday. The opinions listed here are solely those of the writer. | 
