One of a handful of drivers who know what Talladega racing is like without restrictor plates, Kyle Petty and the Sprint Dodge team head to the track this week for Sunday's Talladega 500. The following season, the first restrictor plates appeared on Winston Cup cars at the same tracks. Petty was one of the few currently active drivers who raced at those speeds, then raced with the smaller carburetors and a variety of sizes of restrictor plates. Things are a lot different than they were in the pre-plate days. In the car, things kind of got relative.
Speed is a relative thing.
You're driving 55 miles per hour down the Interstate and you look down and see you're running 70, so you have to slow up. You get used to it. If they dared to walk out, you can bet 40-odd replacement drivers would swarm Talladega Superspeedway before the racing lords could snap their fingers. Winston Cup drivers aren't secretive about their trepidation heading back to Talladega with similar aerodynamic requirements that contributed to a nasty, 19-car pileup at the Daytona 500. Here's a sampling of what some of the drivers have been saying.