Yes

by Michael Daly

Created on: December 03, 2007   Last Updated: November 24, 2008

In the history of NASCAR, restrictor plate racing has by far been the most competitive, with the highest number of lead changes and leaders and thus the highest quality of competition in the sanctioning body's history.

The restrictor plate dates to 1970 as speeds in the sport had escalated beyond the ability of tire companies to handle. It was the suggestion of David Pearson, Bobby Isaac, and Bobby Allison that led to the first restrictor plate in August 1970, used for all NASCAR tracks. Speeds dropped and engine failures became less frequent, and by 1971 the intensity of the racing had picked up to where that February's Daytona 500 set a motorsports record at 48 lead changes. NASCAR ran restrictor plates until September 1971 when they switched to carburator sleeves, but by July 1973 they had returned to restrictor plates, and the 1974 Daytona 500 set a race record at 60 lead changes among 15 drivers.

NASCAR switched to smaller displacement engines in the spring of 1974, a costly and prolonged switchover that drained monetary resources from numerous teams, but restrictor plates remained a standby option, to where when new pavement sent Daytona speeds escalating by over eight MPH from 1978 to 1979, NASCAR seriously considered using the plates that year, but decided against it.

The plates, however, came back to stay when seven seasons of horrendous airborne crashes at the sport's fastest tracks culimated when Bobby Allison ripped out 100 feet of fencing at Talladega. NASCAR tried smaller carburators but they did not keep speeds down (nor did they keep cars off the ground, as Ken Schrader nearly speared Daytona's fencing that July of 1987), so restrictor plates returned for good at Daytona and Talladega in 1988.

Throughout their use the plates have seen more competitive racing than is seen at other tracks. Lead changes have almost always been more frequent in restrictor plate racing and more cars are battling for the win than in other forms of racing. The plates have led to a phenomenon known as sidedrafting - pre-plates a car running second could blow past the leader and the leader could not fight back, but in the plate era the attacking car can get a run and swing alongside, but the leader can fight back by sucking the air off the attacking car's side and thus slowing him down; this side draft has thus given the leader ability to play defense and stop a pass by beating the attacker back to the stripe, and has also led to side by side racing far more sustained than was the case before.

Alternatives to restrictor plates have long been proposed because of the lack of throttle response in their use, but the loss of throttle response has been irrelevent to the sport. Much angry ink has been spilled about massive crashes in restrictor plate races, but when one compared to melees at other tracks, where the same number of wrecked ars is often the case but just not in one or two wrecks, the argument about "the big one" is not just silly, it's stupid. Worrying about a big wreck is the last thing a racer should do; he should only worry about passing every car ahead of him.

Moreover, nowhere has any alternative to the plate ever worked. It was felt that the Craftsman Trucks with their greater bulk would be an alternative, but eight seasons of Truck racing at Daytona and Talladega with constant reduction in manifold size and a still-potential switch to restrictor plates have shown this alternative was a road to nowhere. Smaller displacement engines have been proposed, ignoring the Busch Series' experiment with V6 engines a third smaller than present 358 CID V8s - V6s that needed restrictor plates all the same as V8s.

The arguments against restrictor plate racing are bunk and need to be forgotten, because in a sport whose competitiveness and popularity have dropped steadily over the last ten years, restrictor plate racing has done the opposite and gotten better, to be almost the only good racing left in racing.

Learn more about this author, Michael Daly.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.