Race Teams Want To Pull Restrictors

Even Larry McClure would like to see restrictor plates eliminated at Talladega and Daytona, the two longest and fastest tracks for NASCAR’s top series.

McClure’s Winston Cup team, with driver Sterling Marlin and engine-builder Shelton “Runt” Pittman the key men, have won four of the past nine races at Talladega and five of the past 13 at Daytona.

The restrictor plates, which limit the air flow to the carburetor and thereby limit horsepower, have been in use for 10 years to keep the 3,400-pound stock cars under 200 mph at the two tracks, where they used to run faster.

The plates have cost teams thousands of dollars annually in development and have been blamed for a number of multicar crashes at the big tracks because the cars are less responsive and run closer together because they are so even.

Recently, NASCAR ran tests at Daytona with several teams, including Morgan-McClure Motorsports, to see if different aerodynamic configurations could eliminate the need for the plates.

NASCAR officials have said the results were interesting but that no immediate changes are expected.

“I think everybody would like to get rid of the restrictor plates, or at least open the holes up some,” McClure said. “Even our Kodak Film Chevrolet team, as well as we’ve done with restrictor plate races, would like nothing better than to see them go away.

“This was certainly a step in the right direction. … If restrictor plate racing has a negative, it’s the large packs of cars all running together and not being able to break away.

“Breaking those packs some and putting the driver more in control of the car was the ultimate hope for the test, and we feel pretty good about how that came out,” added McClure, whose orange No. 4 Chevy is among the favorites for Sunday’s Winston 500 at Talladega.

Back to work

Ricky Craven returned to the cockpit of his No. 25 Hendrick Chevrolet last weekend at Martinsville Speedway, two weeks after breaking his right shoulder blade and cracking two ribs in a crash at Texas Motor Speedway.

Craven said his 22nd-place finish, two laps behind winner Jeff Gordon, was uneventful and pretty painless.

“I’d say I was about 90 percent at Martinsville,” he said. “I didn’t feel any worse than I normally do after 500 laps at that track. … “The guys who made up this team and I have a great thing going, and I want to preserve that. Having me back 90 percent is more important to them and me than having a relief driver,” Craven said.

Seconds anyone?

Dale Jarrett, the Winston Cup points leader, is coming off his worse race of the season, finishing an undistinguished 16th last Sunday at Martinsville, Va.

He actually finished worse (23rd) in the season-opener at Daytona, but was racing for the lead when he crashed late in the race. Between those two events, Jarrett finished in the top five six straight times.

Now, still leading defending series champion Terry Labonte by 45 points, Jarrett goes to Talladega, where he has three straight runner-up finishes.

“We finished second at Talladega three times in a row now, so we feel like it’s time that we win,” he said. “But we feel fortunate that we finished second those times, too, because a lot of things happened around us and we’ve been lucky to get through.

“That’s going to be the key again, being able to stay out of trouble and work on the car and get it right at the end.”

Back on the horse

Bill Elliott has had a lot of positive things happen at Talladega.

He set the all-time stock car qualifying record of 212.809 mph in 1987 and has won two races on the 2.66-mile, high-banked oval, including the 1985 Winston 500 in which he set an all-time race record of 186.288.

But he also was involved in a nasty crash last year in which he broke his left leg and wound up missing seven races.

“Boy, that just put my whole season in the toilet,” Elliott said. “But I won’t give it a second thought this week. That was one of the first places I went back to when I got back into a race car.”

Stat of the week

Sterling Marlin, with four victories, and Jeff Gordon, with three, have dominated the past nine restrictor plate races. But Mark Martin, who has only one win in that period, has the best record with seven top-10 finishes in those nine events.