KANSAS CITY, Kan. -- Restrictor plates at Fontana?

According to drivers, that could be one of the results if Auto Club Speedway raises its corner banking from the current 14 degrees to 23 degrees. The Southern California track pitched that very idea recently to parent company International Speedway Corp., the Los Angeles Times reported this week, but there has been no movement on the estimated $30 million project.

The Sprint Cup tour returns to the 2-mile facility in Fontana, Calif., next weekend. The track has been plagued by attendance problems in recent years, and traded its Labor Day weekend date for a spot in the Chase in hopes of drawing a better crowd. The speedway has also drawn criticism from many race fans for the rather mundane nature of the racing at the sweeping track.

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There's nothing wrong with the race track out there. I think it's a great track. Is it our most exciting one? Maybe not our most exciting one. But I still think it's a great track, a great facility.

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-- JEFF GORDON

But 23-degree banking in the corners? That's roughly the steepness of the banking at Lowe's Motor Speedway and Atlanta, which are 1.5-mile facilities. At a 2-mile speedway, drivers believe that much banking may be too much.

"Way too fast," Ryan Newman said. "Either way, that ain't going to happen."

Kasey Kahne even brought up the dreaded R-word: restrictor plates.

"It's a fairly fast track now just because of the size of the track," he said. "The corner speed is a whole lot, but the size of the race track is big, so if you were to bank it, more than likely you'd have to do some type of restrictors, I would think. At that point, it would create a Daytona-type race track, probably. I think Daytona is so unique, and Talladega, and how you race those tracks, how your car handles and goes over the bumps and how they work on that type of track, Fontana would be much different than that.

"It's tough to say what it would be like until we actually did it. I kind of like how it is now. It's a bit boring at times. It's a bit of a technical track. For a driver, it's a pretty neat track because it's technical. It kind of gets spread out and you lose some of that excitement that NASCAR is looking for, that we're all looking for. How to gain that back is maybe 23 degrees of banking, I don't know."

Newman has a more radical idea. "Put a race track inside of it shaped like Bristol or Richmond," he joked, "and you'd have it."

The California track, which is located 50 miles east of Los Angeles and has 92,000 grandstand seats, has failed to sell out since it was awarded a second annual race prior to the 2004 season. Jeff Gordon, who has won three times there, believes the facility isn't the problem.

"There's nothing wrong with the race track out there," he said. "I think this puts it in the best perspective possible. The NFL is a great game, and it is the most popular sport in our country, and they cannot make an NFL football franchise work in Los Angeles. Why is that? I don't think you can do anything. Maybe make it into a Bristol or something like that. But beyond that, I don't think you're going to do anything that's going to change the interest level out there.

"There are just so many options and things to do. I think it's a great track. Is it our most exciting one? Maybe not our most exciting one. But I still think it's a great track, a great facility. If they're not packing the stands, that's not it. It's something else."