NASCAR Not Changing Restrictor Plate At Talladega For Cup Race

Last October teams had to make a mad dash on Saturday morning to get new restrictor plates on thier cup cars. There was some fear that would happen this morning with fast practice times in yesterdays practices.

In practice one Kasey Kahne and two others turned at least one lap over 198 mph and Robby Gordon had the fastest second practice time at almost 197.5 mph. 4 others also broke the 197 mph mark (including Ryan Newman and the #12 Kodak Dodge in 3rd).

So there was some concern that NASCAR would want to but on restrictor plates with smaller holes to somewhat reduce the horsepower and slow the cars down a little. NASCAR has said that they are not to worried about it but that they will be keeping an eye on it during qualifying. They were also speculating that maybe the crews were running more of a qualifying setup than a racing setup.

There is still a chance that NASCAR will want to put a different restrictor plate on after qualifying today. I am curious how that would work. This is an impound race and the crews are not allowed to make changes to their cars after qualifying.

The second practice resulted in slightly slower speeds but over all speeds were well above last falls qualifying speed of almost 192 mph.

Mike Pratt