Pepsi 400 Takes Its Show to Prime Time

Nothing in NASCAR’s Winston Cup series is quite as wild or dangerous as restrictor-plate racing. Mix in the first race under the lights at Daytona International Speedway, and you add to the ever-present potential for disaster at 190 mph.

Heading into tonight’s Pepsi 400, which is expected to draw a crowd of about 175,000, everybody is trying to put on a good face for the event postponed from July by the wildfires that scorched central Florida.

“I like the sparks,” said Ken Schrader, referring to the spray thrown into the air each time a car bottoms out in the 31-degree turns of the 2 1/2-mile track. “It’ll be exciting when we’re all together.

But 43 drivers in the field won’t have time to think about much more than staying in the draft.

Restrictor plates, used only at Daytona and Talladega Superspeedway, cut horsepower and keep the fields bunched, often in side-by-side lines of 20 or more cars. Everybody is so equal that if any driver steps out of line, he usually winds up losing a dozen or more positions.

The close racing also invariably leads to massive crashes like an 11-car wreck last Sunday at Talladega. Among the victims was Mark Martin, and it cost him 114 points in his pursuit of reigning Winston Cup champion Jeff Gordon.

He is 288 points ahead of Martin, and needs only to finish 16th or better in each of the last four events to wrap up his third title in four years.

But anything can happen in a restrictor-plate race, and--even assuming that running after dark will cause no problems--the tension level was high Friday.

One driver who appeared relaxed and looking forward to the race was Bobby Labonte, who will start from the pole.

He started from the pole and finished second in the season-opening Daytona 500, won from the pole two months later in the DieHard 500 at Talladega, and started second and finished sixth there last Sunday in the Winston 500.

Jeff Burton will start alongside Labonte on the front row, followed by Dale Jarrett and Terry Labonte.