For those of you who may be new to the sport and don't have a good understanding of restrictor plates, I'll try to explain them. These plates are somewhere around ½ of an inch thick and have four holes drilled in them. They are placed between the engine's carburetor and the intake manifold. The four holes in the restrictor plates are smaller than the holes of barrels in the 750 Series four barrel Holly carburetor that is used in Winston Cup. The smaller holes in the restrictor plate restrict the amount of fuel and air that enters the engine, reducing the engines horsepower by almost half of its potential. The size of the holes in the restrictor plates are mandated by NASCAR. The sanctioning body has experimented with different size holes on lots of different occasions. The most common sized holes used lately are the 7/8 and 15/16th inch varieties. The plates are handed out to the teams by NASCAR officials when they enter the garage area upon arriving at the track for the weekend's competition.
There are only a handful of drivers in NASCAR's Winston Cup Series who have the courage or experience to race at speeds over 200 M.P.H. That's NASCAR's problem. Let's take a look at the mechanics of it. At any given race, there are only a handful of drivers, usually less than a dozen who are considered to be "frontrunners." These particular drivers can be seen week after week challenging for the lead and the championship points. Out of 43 drivers on the track every week, less than half of them are capable of winning a Winston Cup race by running up front and challenging for the win.
The rest of the drivers are just fill-ins. They make up the 43 car field, and usually get lapped by the leaders before the race reaches the halfway point. There is no way that these marginal Winston Cup race drivers could race at speeds in excess of 200 M.P.H. It just isn't feasible, they can't keep up with the field on the slower tracks as it is.
If NASCAR decided to forgo the restrictor plates at the super-speedways, the race would be held between a few of the front runners and the rest of the field would be lost, riding around in circles waiting for the race to end. These laggards who currently can't keep up with the Winston Cup field have no business racing in the Winston Cup Series. Some of the present Winston Cup drivers, who would like to consider their selves to be frontrunners, actually have had the gall to complain that the Winston Cup cars are going too fast. It's hard to believe that a couple of them have actually won races. If they feel that they are going too fast now, what would they do if they had to race at Daytona or Talladega without restrictor plates?
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