Right Turns

A NASCAR BLOG BY Jim Duff

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Why not try smaller engines?

Feb 29

The idea of putting restrictor plates on NASCAR’s Sprint Cup cars at the newly renamed Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, Calif., has merit. Sure, it would likely be as nerve-wracking for the drivers as the plate races at Daytona and Talladega, but it might also provide the same kind of close racing that fans enjoy far more than the usual California fare.

But the idea that the plate proposal is being floated in the first place demonstrates yet again that NASCAR may have made a mistake by not switching to a smaller engine when it unveiled the new Cup car.

A smaller engine – maybe even one that used that newfangled technology called fuel injection instead of those things called carburetors
that disappeared from your family sedan decades ago – would have slowed the cars. It also would almost certainly have meant an end to plate racing.

And if slower speeds meant that some races needed to be shorter, that wouldn’t be an entirely bad thing.

Smaller, more fuel-efficient engines might even have given NASCAR something to tout to the environmental crowd that is always complaining about the way the sport wastes the dwindling supply of fossil fuels.

Traditionalists may howl, but the sky didn’t fall when NASCAR switched to unleaded fuel last year. Sooner or later, the cars are going to be using smaller engines. It’s time we started preparing for the change.