Hendrick Motorsports' Dale Earnhardt Jr. no fan of smaller holes in restrictor plates
Other Dale Earnhardt Jr. news: Dale Earnhardt Jr. admits frustration with season; is willing to wait on crew chief decision
CONCORD, N.C. – Dale Earnhardt Jr. says he is not a fan of smaller holes in the restrictor plates for races at Daytona and Talladega.
NASCAR is decreasing the size of the four holes in the plates from 60/64ths inch in diameter to 59/64ths inch for the race in two weeks at Talladega Superspeedway. The move will decrease the air flow through the engines and sap them of an estimated 12-15 horsepower, which should make a difference of a few miles an hour.
Last April, Roush Fenway Racing’s Carl Edwards did a lap of more than 200 miles an hour on the next-to-last lap before battling with Brad Keselowski for the win and ending up in the air, smashing into the catch fence.
As a result of a review following the incident, Daytona and Talladega are in the process of raising their fences from 14 feet to 22 feet.
“Y’all know what sells tickets and nobody’s got hurt,” Earnhardt Jr. said Friday prior to practice for the NASCAR Banking 500 at Lowe’s Motor Speedway. “I don’t want to go flipping across the finish line every week. The measures of raising the fences are good, but cars go through them fences. Parts go through them.
“It seems like the smaller the plate gets, the more we wreck, in my opinion. The smaller you make the plate, the more on top of each other we race, the more we’re going to wreck. Every time that plate gets smaller, it gets more dangerous in my opinion.”
The difficulty with the smaller plates is that it makes it more difficult to pass, said Earnhardt Jr., who has seven restrictor-plate victories in his career.
“You run three, four [expletive] wide, and if you’re in the second lane or the third lane, you’re boxed in,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “You have nowhere to go. You can’t pass. Nowhere to go. You can’t do anything about your position but sit there and ride and hope that maybe you can push your lane forward. And that sucks. That’s boring.”
