I've been reading some complaints about the new FR9 Ford engine and how the Ford teams had an unfair advantage because they could push longer than the Chevy or Toyota or Dodge engines. To be honest, I disagree. Despite being a Chevy man, I say good for Ford (Jack Roush/Yates) for building a better engine. The old Ford motor sucked! What I do have a problem with is that the rules NASCAR put in place gave the Fords opportunity to have greater advantage over speedweeks than they would have at any other track save for Talladega.
I understand that it is dangerous to the drivers and the fans for cars to go over 200mph. But I do not believe the restrictor plate is the answer. Changing the size of the plate does virtually nothing to limit the speeds of a two car draft, however it does plenty to change the speed of a single car. If they removed the plate, there would be no reason to run a two car draft because it wouldn't necessarily be any faster than a single car with a run. What removing the restrictor plates would also do is give the drivers some throttle response back. So when they are drafting and running 3/4 throttle, as they pull out to slingshot and put the throttle down, they would actually be able to complete the pass and overcome the 'wall of air' that was keeping guys from being able to complete passes all weekend long.
Now, those complaints aside, I do have to admit that the race we saw this year at Daytona, and will see again 3 more times this year is somewhat exciting and provided for a good finish. Because I don't enjoy how the cars are racing did not prevent me from enjoying what turned out to be a pretty good race. The majority of fan response to the racing seems to be positive from what I can tell, so I doubt there will be any changes to the plate racing for the rest of the season.
However, next year NASCAR will have fuel injection, which means there will no longer be a carbourator to place a restrictor plate or a tapered spacer on. This means that NASCAR will have to come up with a different way to limit the speeds that these cars are reaching on the Superspeedway tracks of Daytona and Talladega. My hope is that they will come up with something that will allow single cars to run as fast as multiple cars and give the drivers back a little throttle response so that we can get back to the kind of racing that we used to see at Daytona and Talladega.
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