TALLADEGA, Ala. -- Just when Dale Earnhardt thought he'd mastered Talladega Superspeedway, NASCAR changed the rules on him. A smaller restrictor plate will be used Sunday in the DieHard 500, and Earnhardt -- who won both races here last year -- thinks it's slowed him down considerably. "We're a whole lot slower," said Earnhardt, who also won the second round of the International Race of Champions series here last April. “ People here always see a dynamite race with two-wide on every lap and three- and four-wide a lot. The smaller plates is going to close it up more than ever this weekend. ” — Ward Burton "But that was their intention when they made the change, to slow us down," he said. "Now we have to figure out a way to get that speed back and it's not easy." NASCAR has required carburetor restrictor plates be used on Winston Cup cars at Talladega and Daytona for more than a decade. A plate, which is really just a thin piece of aluminum with four holes punched in it, is designed to limit horsepower and thus cut down the speed. But even with them, the potential still exists for cars to creep up toward the 200-mph speeds that once were routine at Talladega, which at 2.66 miles long is the sport's longest, fastest and arguably most dangerous oval. That threat led the sport's sanctioning body to reduce the holes in the plates by 1/32 of an inch to seven-eighths. Earnhardt estimated it took 25 horsepower away from his car and most of the other Winston Cup drivers agreed that it will slow lap times. "I think it makes us go about eight-tenths of a second to a second slower," said Jimmy Makar, crew chief for points leader Bobby Labonte. "I know that doesn't sound like a whole lot, but a second can sometimes feel like a lifetime in this sport." Michael Waltrip, who finished 18th in last year's race, likes the smaller plates because teams can work harder at improving other areas of the car. "It opens it up a little bit to the crews to use their ingenuity to try to make the cars run faster and to gain an advantage over their fellow competitors," Waltrip said. But most drivers were opposed to the plates even before the change because they keep the engines equal, meaning most of the 43-car field is unable to distance itself from the other cars and can end up running four-wide. "People here always see a dynamite race with two-wide on every lap and three- and four-wide a lot," Ward Burton said. "The smaller plates is going to close it up more than ever this weekend." That kind of bunching together guarantees at least one multicar crash at just about every Talladega race. "With that kind of racing, one slip can knock a bunch of cars out of a race," Makar said. "I'd rather have our destiny in our own hands, but you just don't get that with restrictor plate racing." Even with restrictor plates, cars are still running at speeds in the 190s -- fast enough to create the potential for crashes that could send the cars airborne. Kenny Irwin said that possibility was reason enough for NASCAR to make a change. "The whole change was for safety and I don't think that's a bad thing," he said. "Crashes are a part of racing, one we try to avoid but still a part. Crashes with cars leaving the ground are not part of the deal." Practice and qualifying get under way Friday for the Winston Cup drivers, several of whom will also take part Saturday in the IROC race.







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