I just finished reading the “Did Park groove one to Ripken” thread and of course, the topic of Dale Jr.'s win was referenced - I haven’t been following the details, but one thing that has been brought up is that all driver’s are “issued” a restrictor plate, and because this is done by NASCAR at random, Dale Jr couldn’t have been given an edge.
While I can’t comment on his win one way or another, I am curious - if a restrictor plate is used to limit a car’s speed, wouldn’t all plates be the same? What type of variation could there be that could make that much difference? Are mechanical tolerances something NASCAR types would be pretty good at getting pretty darn close to exact? This seems to be a pretty big issue in managing the competitive edge of NASCAR teams.
From what I heard on the radio the restrictor plates are all identical. Perhaps the specific plate people get are handed out at random so there would be no way to tell ahead of time which car gets which plate.
All plates are (theoretically) the same and (I think) provided by NASCAR. At the very least, plates are inspected prior to qualifying and the race itself. It seems unlikely that a rigged plate was used to give Jr. an edge.
That said, could NASCAR have done anything to give him an unfair advantage? Absolutely. Since everything on the car is subject to inspection, and the inspectors are human, it is possible to give an advantage to a driver (or disadvantage for that matter) by enforcing the rules either loosely or strictly.
For example, if NASCAR did want to give Dale Jr. an edge, they could allow him to run a slightly lower spoiler angle, thus reducing drag and allowing him to (potentially) go faster than the rest.
Note that I am not saying I think this actually happened. If it did, it would require that the team be involved in the scam as they would have to know that the car would pass inspection with the rigged spoiler or whatever. I hope that at the very least, Jr. himself would not want to win under such a cloud, especially given who his father was and what Daytona meant to him.
gEEk - thanks for the quick reference to restrictor plates and the summary thinking on the ability to bias a NASCAR car. No surprise that a competition of any sort can be biased, I just wanted to know more about that specific item.
Now, on a related note - if a restrictor plate goes between a car’s carburetor and intake manifold, that implies (duh) that NASCARs use carburetion, not fuel injection. Since most street cars now use injection, why does this type (and maybe all types) of race car use carburetion? Is it like the different between automatic and manual, where most of the public prefers automatic, but enthusiasts and race car drivers want/need the control and flexibility of manual?
Restrictor plates, which are indeed supplied by NASCAR, are used on all cars for all races run at the “superspeedways” - Daytona, Darlington, and Talladega. They reduce power by making it harder for the engine to “breathe”, reducing maximum speeds in the interest of safety. They also have the effect of reducing inherent top-speed differences between cars, keeping the field bunched together, and thereby providing crowd-pleasing fender banging.
The reduced power also makes it harder to pass without “drafting” - keeping right behind another car so it can break the air for you, letting you keep up with it at a lower power setting. To pass the car ahead, you pull out (normally inside, or “downhill”), apply the extra power you temporarily have, and pull back in in front of the car. That’s interesting to watch in itself, but reflects tactics rather than power. Further, over a long race, fewer cars fall far enough behind to be lapped and effectively out of the competition.
The questions about Junior’s win are intimations that the other drivers may have quietly agreed that it would be good for the business of the sport if he were to somehow win, not that there was anything funky about his car. With the differences between cars reduced by the restrictor plates, it would look less suspicious than at a shorter, lower-banked track where they’re not used. Another thing that only a cynic like me would find suspicious is that his teammate, Michael Waltrip, who won the Daytona 500 for his first-ever win but couldn’t celebrate it then, came in second.
Okay, you certainly shouldn’t take anecdotal evidence as the final word, and you definitely shouldn’t take it second hand. So, that having been said…
I used to work with a guy who was the tire man for a NASCAR team (many NASCAR team members are part-timers). At the time, Jeff Gordon was the golden child of NASCAR, winning left and right. My pal was absolutely certain that Gordon’s team was cheating, and that the post-race inspections on Gordon’s car were gloss-overs.
Specifically, he said that restrictor plates could be widened by a few thousandths of an inch with minimal risk of detection–provided the post-race inspection judges were minimally complicit in allowing such things to occur.
The reason there is room for such hijinks to occur is simple. After 300 or more miles of racing, tolerances all over the vehicle can fall out of spec of their own accord. Therefore, judging whether or not a car was deliberately set out of spec before the race is more of an art than a science.
Anyway, the guy I knew probably knew what he was talking about. Anyone remember those unusual times when Harry Gant would break out of the pack and run away from the entire field? Mmmm-hhmmm.
Yep. A single big Holley 4v carb. Carbs are a lot easier to work on/maintain than FI, and in a few scenarios (like NASCAR engines), they make more power. And then there’s the tradition thing…
CART, F1, and IRL cars are injected, IIRC. I guess the carburetor fixation is an American thing.
Actually, to the best of my knowledge only NASCAR (not just Winston Cup, but all of the other series as well) and NHRA drag racing (mostly?) still use carburators as opposed to fuel injection. Most other forms of racing, IRL, CART, F1, etc, have long since switched to fuel injection. Fuel injection gives much finer control over the air-fuel mixture and can be tuned in real-time by computer control.
The reason NASCAR (and the NHRA for that matter) have stuck with carburators is twofold. One is nostalgia, they’ve always done it this way. NASCAR grew out of grass roots racing, where people built their own cars to race on weekends. As such, technology was never a driving force. Second, cost; developing fuel injection systems and optimizing them is expensive (Formula 1 is the prime example of this). NASCAR has attempted to keep costs down by limiting the influx of new (expensive) technologies to the sport. Obviously, racing stock cars is not cheap, but compared to F1 or even IRL, another “budget” series, there is no comparison.
Gunslinger said:
While carbs are may be easier in some senses, they are still complicated pieces of equipment and can be quite tricky to set up. As to power, F1 engines are limited to 3 liters (183 cubic inches) and produce somewhere around 900HP. NASCAR engines are limited to 300 cubic inches and produce around 800HP in non-restrictor plate form. In terms of HP per liter, though, NHRA is king. Out of 500 cubic inches they produce in excess of 6000HP or 730HP/L versus 300HP/L for F1 and 162HP/L for NASCAR.
Your numbers are a bit off. Formula One allows a non-turbocharged engine of up to 3.5 liters (about 225cid). NASCAR allows 5.8 liters (370cid, IIRC). Your horespower numbers are in the neighborhood, though. If you’re going to compare NHRA engines to NASCAR and F1, it’s more fair to use the Pro Stock class since like Pro Stock, NASCAR and F1 use normally-aspirated engines on fuels that don’t contain nitromethane. Pro Stock is more like 1800Hp from 500ci, IIRC, which falls far short of what the fuel-injected F1 engines make.
All that being said, a restrictor plate is a device that helps keep Bubba from slamming into the wall at 225mph.