That’s gotta be about the worst place to get hit in a race car.

So perhaps if they got rid of the restrictor plates but made the mandatory engine size smaller and implemented a max RPM they could control power a bit more, while still leaving some design elements open to the engine builders so we'd see a little bit of variance.  And there could be budget caps to keep things reasonable, but the budget for safety items like cages, seats, etc would be open.  Just brainstorming.  Granted, I think we're at a point in technology where pretty much any limits placed on the engines will only be temporary and within a short time speeds will creep right back up.

This is still the fastest car Nascar has ever seen.  

Tons of effort has been expended since then to make superspeedways more competitive and safer.  I'm not convinced it has worked very well and I personally find the current Nascar far less entertaining.  I actually stopped watching Nascar due to the COT.

 If I want to watch spec racing, I can build a spec Miata or spec 944 myself and go do it.  Spec racing has never been exciting to watch, IMO.  

When it comes to Nascar and superspeedways winning is all about being lucky enough to survive the "big one." All the racing aspects of it have been marginalized.  

I hope Newman retires, personally.

Bwahaha:

https://theluggnutt.com/2020/02/20/x-rays-reveal-ryan-newman-made-of-wolverine-like-adamantium/

The problem isn't so much the speeds anymore, the restrictors solved that.  They aren't running qualifying and race laps at 210 anymore like back in the early 80's.  It's the aero.  The cars run faster in packs, so you get the dueling freight trains that form and a pack of 40 cars where the gap from the front to the back of the field is realistically less than a couple of seconds at the stripe. One guy gets loose at the front and you got a bunch of mangled cars if they're lucky, or somebody goes to the hospital or the morgue if they arent. There's just no place to go, and nobody will get out of the line because that's a quick trip to the back of the field.  It's 195 mile an hour wreck just waiting to happen, and the urgency of "Green-White-Checker" just makes everything worse.  I really think what they've done with the trucks may be the way to go, make the superspeedway cars as aerodynamic as a brick so the draft isn't as important and they can actually drive the cars instead of putting their foot to the floor and trying not to run each other over.   Didn't they ban bump drafting or change the cars so you tore up the car if you tried to do it back in the 20 teens?  IMO that's a big part of the problem, guys pushing each other to the front. 

EDIT: Just checked the recap for the truck race, they wrecked a bunch of cars there too, but the speeds are down in the 180 range so maybe that helps?

In reply to AnthonyGS :

True dat, i feel the 80's were the high-water mark of Nascar.  Cars were still recognizable as something you could buy off the showroom floor but still ungodly fast.  

The problem with restrictor plate racing is that the cars get bunched up.

Racers being racers have discovered that two cars together will go faster than one by itself.

So they line up together and push each other around, This is where things get sketchy.

When they are pushing it loosens the front car up, as it looses downforce on the rear wheels.

So essentially the rear car can impart steering into the front car,

the drivers of the both cars must steer together or the front car will spin off the rear car.

The pusher is only running at half throttle or so when he is pushing, he is able to disconnect from the from the front car and go to full power and slingshot past him.

Things get double sketchy when the front car does not want to go the direction the rear car pushes.

Such as on the final lap when the pusher tries to slingshot the leading car, the lead car will want to block the pusher from passing at the same time as he is benefiting from the push.

It is very easy to for the front car to get turned and this is what happened to Newman

Blaney had pushed Newman (into the lead) clear of Hamlin and they were on the inside half of the track, Blaney wanted to slingshot Newman to the inside for the win (because he knew that) Newman wanted to move up the track to block Hamlin (who had the fastest car). Newman was trying to keep Blaney connected and steer the pair of cars to the outside of the track to block Hamlin, Blaney was trying to disconnect and slingshot and that is what got Newman turned. If Newman and Blaney had stayed together it is likely Hamlin would have gotten a pusher and passed for the win, so it was critical to Newman to keep both the cars behind him.

In reply to 06HHR :

Drafting has been around longer than slippery cars.

"His first win at a "superspeedway" came at the Daytona 500 in 1960. Johnson and his crew chief Ray Fox were practicing for the race, trying to figure out how to increase their speed, which was 22 miles per hour (35 km/h) slower than the top cars in the race. During a test run a faster car passed Johnson. He noticed that when he moved behind the faster car his own speed increased due to the faster car's slipstream. Johnson was then able to stay close behind the faster car until the final lap of the test run, when he used the "slipstream" effect to slingshot past the other car. By using this technique, Johnson went on to win the 1960 Daytona 500, despite the fact his car was slower than others in the field. Johnson's technique was quickly adopted by other drivers, and his practice of "drafting" has become a common tactic in NASCAR races."

Richard Petty also crashed out of the speedway around that time as well.

You are 100% right that the 80s were the high point of nascar design.

AnthonyGS said:

This is still the fastest car Nascar has ever seen.  

Tons of effort has been expended since then to make superspeedways more competitive and safer.  I'm not convinced it has worked very well and I personally find the current Nascar far less entertaining.  I actually stopped watching Nascar due to the COT.

 If I want to watch spec racing, I can build a spec Miata or spec 944 myself and go do it.  Spec racing has never been exciting to watch, IMO.  

When it comes to Nascar and superspeedways winning is all about being lucky enough to survive the "big one." All the racing aspects of it have been marginalized.  

I hope Newman retires, personally.

Rusty Wallace did a test at talladega on 2004 with no plate. Overall speed was around 216 mph.

https://www.racing-reference.info/showblog?id=3381

Wally said:

In reply to 06HHR :

Drafting has been around longer than slippery cars.

"His first win at a "superspeedway" came at the Daytona 500 in 1960. Johnson and his crew chief Ray Fox were practicing for the race, trying to figure out how to increase their speed, which was 22 miles per hour (35 km/h) slower than the top cars in the race. During a test run a faster car passed Johnson. He noticed that when he moved behind the faster car his own speed increased due to the faster car's slipstream. Johnson was then able to stay close behind the faster car until the final lap of the test run, when he used the "slipstream" effect to slingshot past the other car. By using this technique, Johnson went on to win the 1960 Daytona 500, despite the fact his car was slower than others in the field. Johnson's technique was quickly adopted by other drivers, and his practice of "drafting" has become a common tactic in NASCAR races."

 

Richard Petty also crashed out of the speedway around that time as well.

Throughout the 70s and 80s they called it the slingshot move. Your probably thinking of lee pettys crash in 1961.

In reply to MotorsportsGordon :

I forgot about Lee's wreck. They both left the speedway during their qualifying races though Richard emerged uninjured.  

Lee is the upside down car:

Richard on the wrong side of the fence:

Wally said:

In reply to MotorsportsGordon :

I forgot about Lee's wreck. They both left the speedway during their qualifying races though Richard emerged uninjured.  

 

Lee is the upside down car:

Richard on the wrong side of the fence:

Even with plates jimmy Horton went out of talledega in 93.

In reply to MotorsportsGordon :

 "You know you're in trouble when the first person to get to you after a wreck is carrying a beer."- Jimmy Horton 

I think there's two aspects of the problem here:

1. To slow the cars down enough to keep them out of the stands, they have to restrict them, which when combined with other factors, bunches them up.

2. To spread the cars out enough to keep them from plowing into each other in huge pileups, they have to do something else, which they have not yet figured out what that might be. Or they don't even want to spread them out, because some subset of the fans like it.

I still say they should run the roval.

If you look at it coldly and dispassionately, the truth is that NASCAR cars outgrew Daytona and Talladega in the mid-80s, and they shouldn't race there anymore. Everything they've done since then has been attempts to band-aid the situation, but the fundamental problem is that those tracks were designed for the cars of the 50s and 60s, and the cars evolved past them.

Having said that, I know they aren't going away. Tradition, popularity, prestige, and cold hard cash means they are staying on the calendar. I haven't looked at the ratings, but I bet the plate races do better than the average race on a cookie-cutter 1.5 mile tri-oval, and an awful lot of that is because of the possibility of the "big one". It creates drama, and people love that.

I'm not going to pretend I know how to fix the problem. NASCAR has had lots of very smart people thinking about it for 30+ years and they haven't fixed it yet. If it was easy, it would have happened by now.

Time for a high tech solution.  

A sensor of the back and front of each car that tells the following car to cut power for some amount of time (1-2 seconds, enough to lose a position) whenever they get within the "draft zone" for longer than say 2-3 seconds.  Drivers would stay out in their own air more to keep their power level at 100%.

Why does every damn thread that mention NASCAR have to devolve into a pissing contest about how awful it's gotten and why you don't like it anymore?

This was a discussion about a man. A father. And we were concerned over wether or not he survived this accident.

I'm sorry that his accident didn't meet your standards of entertainment.

/Rant

I don't think it's a pissing contest about how bad Nascar has become.  It's a discussion about a man who survived a horrific accident, and what can be done to make sure the next guy this happens to will be just as lucky, cause it's going to happen again.  I like demolition derbies as much as the next guy, but watching people die isn't what I would call entertainment.

BoostedBrandon said:

Why does every damn thread that mention NASCAR have to devolve into a pissing contest about how awful it's gotten and why you don't like it anymore?

This was a discussion about a man. A father. And we were concerned over wether or not he survived this accident.

I think you are seriously misreading people's comments here. Yes, there has been a little bit of "NASCAR sucks", but not much, and most of the discussion has been about how to prevent other men and fathers from being in horrific accidents like the one that happened to Newman.

I'm sorry that his accident didn't meet your standards of entertainment.

That's a really awful thing to say, especially to this community.

infinitenexus said:

So perhaps if they got rid of the restrictor plates but made the mandatory engine size smaller and implemented a max RPM they could control power a bit more, while still leaving some design elements open to the engine builders so we'd see a little bit of variance.  And there could be budget caps to keep things reasonable, but the budget for safety items like cages, seats, etc would be open.  Just brainstorming.  Granted, I think we're at a point in technology where pretty much any limits placed on the engines will only be temporary and within a short time speeds will creep right back up.

i think at one time NASCAR considered reducing cubic inches for super speedways but the teams complained about the cost of having multiple engine development costs. I agree this would be a great way to limit power and the pacts.

In reply to pirate :

They had v6s in the Busch series and still needed plates.  I'm not sure how small an engine you'd need to get rid of them.  I believe at one point someone, possibly Junior Johnson's team tested small V8s without a plate and ended up making more power. 

In reply to BoostedBrandon :

I didn't get this impression at all.  It seemed everyone wants to prevent crashes like we saw and are not sure how. As I said earlier a lot of work has been put into getting where they are now and if there was a simple answer we'd already have seen it. If you think anyone involved is happy that these crashes happen you're insane. 

This is the best photo EVER!!!!

NASCAR driver Ryan Newman released from hospital, racing team says

Relevant:

https://www.motorsport.com/indycar/news/why-chilton-quit-oval-indycar/4689629/