him to?” She looked back at Terence. “Would
Terence coughed and looked embarrassed. “I don’t know,” he stammered. “Maybe. If I’d really heard the voice.”
“Wasn’t there more to the story?” asked Shane. “I thought I heard that they checked over Bobby Isaac’s car after he parked it, and they found some problem with it that would have put him into the wall if he hadn’t got out.”
They all looked up at Harley for confirmation. “I don’t know,” he said. “It was before my time, and it’s not the kind of thing drivers want to talk about. How about if we gripe about restrictor plates instead?”
“Well, that’s just another wreck story,” Ray Reeve pointed out. “I mean, if you’re talking about why they implemented them in the first place. Bobby Allison.”
“Restrictor plates!” said Shane, in the tone people usually reserve for words like “maggots.”
“I know,” said Justine. “But if you don’t want Bobby Allison in your lap, you’d better put up with them.”
“Or Bill Elliott,” said Sarah Nash. “Bill Elliott is the one who did 212 miles per hour at Daytona. Not that I’d mind having him in my-” Her voice trailed off and she snatched up her magazine, holding it a bit too close to her face to actually be reading it.
Bill waved his hand to attract Harley’s attention. “What’s this about having Bobby Allison in your lap?”
Harley smiled with relief at the prospect of getting the tour discussion back on track. This he knew. “Now that’s the story you ought to tell, coming into Talladega,” he said. “The 1987 Winston 500. Dodging the bullet. Everybody knew it was going to be a fast race that year. Talladega is a super speedway-a long straightaway to build up speed on. Bill Elliott took the pole in qualifying with a speed of 212.8 miles an hour. That’s more than three miles a minute, folks. I can’t even tell you what that feels like. That was before restrictor plates-in other words, back when there was no limit on speed except the capabilities of the engine and the driver.”
“What was Bobby Allison’s qualifying speed?” asked Matthew.
“His Buick topped out at 211, putting him second to Elliott. And, before you ask, Earnhardt was fourth. So that race was shaping up to be a whirlwind, and they got 22 laps into it-what’s that, about seven minutes?-when Bobby Allison’s Buick ran over some debris that wasn’t supposed to be on the track, and cut his tire. The car went airborne.”
He paused for effect, hoping his listeners were picturing a Buick lifting off like a
“The good news is that Allison was going so fast when he took off that he managed to clear the five-foot concrete wall between the track and the spectators. Maybe it’s even better news that although the car was airborne, it did
There was a little silence while most of the bus waited to see if it would be Bill or Bekasu who asked, “How badly was he injured?”
Bekasu got the question out first, and everybody was laughing before she finished it.
“Not a scratch on him,” said Harley cheerfully. “Those drivers’ safety harnesses do work most of the time. It scared the hell out of Davey Allison, though, seeing his dad go into the wall like that. He must have said a prayer or two just then.”
“He recovered well,” said Ray Reeve. “Davey won that race, as I recall.”
“And none of the spectators were hurt?”
“Maybe a cut or a bruise. Nothing major that I ever heard about,” said Harley.
Shane McKee was scowling. “Yeah, the only casualty that day was the sport itself.”
Harley nodded and tried to look sympathetic. He wasn’t sure he agreed, having been a driver himself, but he could see how fans would feel resentful about the hobbling of their sport. “NASCAR saw that wreck as a red light on their dashboard,” he said. “The officials knew that at those speeds on super speedways, sooner or later there would have been a tragedy. If Allison’s car had cleared the wire fence, there’s no telling how many people he could have killed. So they came up with a new piece of equipment designed to prevent that.”
“Restrictor plates.” Shane spat out the word.
Harley sighed. If you ever wanted to stop a bar fight, just say the words “restrictor plates,” and you’ll see instant unification take place. Everybody hated them. Maybe it would have been different if the tragedy had been allowed to happen, but it hadn’t. Earnhardt used to get wistful about how much he missed barreling around Talladega and Daytona at 200-plus miles an hour, but common sense told him and everybody else in the sport that the thrill wasn’t worth risking the lives of innocent bystanders. That was what people forgot: the restrictor plate wasn’t put on to protect the driver; it was there to protect the fans.
“It’s a device attached to the carburetor to limit the speed of the car to less than 200 miles an hour,” said Harley, in case anyone was still confused. He figured that women could be race fans without necessarily knowing the mechanical aspects of the sport, but if he had to guess among this particular group of passengers, he’d bet that Terence Palmer and Bill Knight were the ones who didn’t know. Well, Arlene, maybe. Whatever she had known was falling away, but she didn’t seem to mind. Just looked out the window or at Jim with a vague smile, like a stranger at a birthday party.
Ray Reeve laughed. “Does anybody remember what Earnhardt used to call the restrictor plate decision?”
Jesse Franklin clapped his hands with a whoop of joy. “I had forgotten that!
“They were always saying stuff like that about one another,” said Harley, unable to resist the urge to defend his boyhood hero. “The real reason that Earnhardt objected to restrictor plates is because restrictor plates did more than slow down the cars. They also softened the throttle response. Knowing how to use that throttle had been a skill that separated the Earnhardts and the Elliotts from the run-of-the-mill drivers. Now, with restrictor plates, the cars mellowed out on the corners. That’s what Dale called it: mellowing out. He meant that there was no longer a surge of power in reserve when you took the corners. Earnhardt said that he and Elliott and Bodine had the skills to run their cars wide open on the corners while lesser drivers would get loose trying to make the turn, so they’d get left behind. When restrictor plates became mandatory on the super speedways, that no longer happened, and the big dogs lost their advantage. Now everybody could keep up with them, which meant more bunching up in the race. And sometimes more wrecks.”
“I always thought there was another factor, too,” said Ray Reeve.
Mr. Reeve hadn’t said much on the tour except for an occasional grumble, but Harley thought a chance to spout off might improve his mood, so he held out the microphone and motioned for the old man to come forward. Ray Reeve had to grasp the backs of the seats to keep from falling, but finally he made his way up to the front, looking a bit disconcerted to be facing rows of listeners.
“Well,” he said, blinking at his fellow passengers, “all I was going to say was that there’s another reason Dale didn’t like restrictor plates. At least I think so. When nobody had the advantage of extra bursts of speed, the field was evened out so much that the only way to win a race like Daytona was to get a drafting buddy. And, you know, Dale would rather work alone, which I can certainly relate to. If I can’t do it alone, I won’t do it at all.” He looked doubtfully at Harley. “Do I have to explain drafting?”
Ratty Laine spoke up from the driver’s seat. “Anybody wants a demonstration of drafting, just look out the window into the other lane!”
Harley smiled. In the left hand lane an 18-wheeler was in the process of passing their bus, and scooting along behind the big rig was a white Ford Taurus, pulled along in the wake of the truck.
“Does anybody know who came up with the concept of drafting in stock car racing?”
Sarah Nash spoke up. “Junior Johnson.”
“Right. Well, Mr. Reeve, why don’t I go ahead and explain drafting.” Harley looked at the bewildered faces of Bill Knight and Bekasu. He would have to explain drafting, preferably in words of one syllable. He took back the microphone and waited while the old man threaded his way back to his seat.
“Okay, folks: drafting. Ratty was right about that Taurus in the other lane traveling in the wake of the truck. The Taurus is getting pulled along, but if it tried to pass that truck, it might swerve a little because the air displaced by the body of the truck would hit the passing car, catching the Taurus in its turbulence. With me so far?”
“I have passed a truck on an Interstate, yes,” said Bekasu without noticeable enthusiasm.
