Finally catching up on a long day of blogs. How nice to see the fastest growing segment of the NASCAR family (women) blogging on racing. I grew up an Earnhardt fan (even when he drove a pink car) and through his years with Wrangler (my father’s career). Having said that, NASCAR is a tribute to innovation at every level, fuel mileage, tires, safety, competition, etc.
Restrictor plates don’t “level the field” any more than having the same tires, brakes, engine sizes, car templates and octane levels. No.3 earned a reputation for Intimidation despite having less horsepower in almost every race. Restrictor plates (while a pain for lovers of speed) prove that yet more can be achieved in engine designs and engineering. On the superspeedways, cars are still lapped.
But I must confess that NASCAR has finally disappointed even me, having been the most capitalistic and least socialistic, it too has succumbed to the incentives game with the proposed museum that even NC is bidding on. One would hope that a sport that has the fastest growing fan base in the nation would learn that it has done fine sans government incentives.
Now if we could only get restrictor plates installed at the General Assembly.
