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Saw mention in a thread of the book out by Tom Jensen, so thought some ya might like to see an excerpt from it.
Recommended reading!
By the 1970s, most every NASCAR team seemed to have something or other up its sleeve. The teams all saved their best tricks for the Daytona 500, then as now the most important race of the year. Daytona drew the most attention and sponsor interest, got the most exposure, and paid extremely well. But in those days, the annual January testing at the 2.5-mile superspeedway was not closely supervised by NASCAR, and cars didn't have to test in legal trim. If a team was looking for a sponsor prior to Daytona and wanted to generate some buzz, all it had to do was bolt in a 500-cubic-inch motor for a January test session and run some blisteringly fast lap times. All of a sudden the word would get around about how fast it was running. There was no better or quicker way to attract a sponsor's dollars.
And the rules of the era only fed into the temptation to fudge the legality of your car. In an effort to equalize competition among the various makes and hold speeds as well, NASCAR stepped up its use of restrictor plates. The way a restrictor plate works is very simple: It is a machined flat aluminum plate that fits between the carburetor and intake manifold and uses small-diameter openings to limit the amount of fuel-air mixture that flows from the carburetor into the engine, drastically reducing horsepower. Although NASCAR has used a variety of different sizes and configurations of restrictor plates over the years, in the contemporary motors used today at superspeedways, they cut horsepower from about 780 to 400.
"When they first started putting the plates on the cars, when I drove for Holman-Moody, old Jake (Elder) had a big restrictor plate taped up under the fan cover," recalled David Pearson of the early 1970s. "Back then NASCAR would hand you the plate and you'd turn around and put it on. Old Jake just turned right around and stuck the one NASCAR gave him up under the fan cover and pulled the other one out and put it on the car. Looking at it, you couldn't tell the difference. You can take a knife and go around those holes in the restrictor plate, open them up just a little and pick up 10 horsepower. We run the 125-milers (Daytona 500 qualifying races) that way. NASCAR came over and said they wanted to see it. All they wanted to do was look down in the carburetor and see that the plate was still on it. Jake got mad and jerked the seal off. They said, well since you broke the seal just go ahead and take the carburetor off. If he hadn't done that we would have gotten away with it. But all I was doing was looking in my mirror and driving just fast enough to stay in front of them. I could have run a lot faster, but you've got to use your head when you're doing something like that. But we got caught. There has been a lot of cheating going on with the plate. I would say there still are people cheating with it someway, somehow."
Another master manipulator of the restrictor plate was former car owner Hoss Ellington, who campaigned correct usage in racing cars for Sterling Marlin and the late Tim Richmond, as well as Charlie Glotzbach's disqualified 1973 Charlotte car, among others. His most famous car was the one Donnie Allison drove in 1979, when he crashed with Cale Yarborough going for the win on the last lap of the Daytona 500.
In 1986, Marlin's Ellington-owned Chevrolet Monte Carlo was penalized for having an illegal fuel cooling system prior to the Firecracker 400 at Daytona in July. Marlin's car had a hidden padded metal box filled with dry ice and a spiraled fuel line that ran through it. The dry ice cooled the fuel, making it more dense, so it would generate additional horsepower under combustion
.
Pearson, who drove briefly for Ellington, said the outspoken owner loved the conspiracy aspect of cheating but was not mechanically inclined himself. "Hoss never did know what to do," Pearson said. "(Engine builder) Runt (Pittman) was the main one on that car. He's the one who did all the cheating and stuff. I know one time when I drove his car, Runt took a grease fitting and screwed a hole for it in the intake manifold. Hoss couldn't stand it. He wanted to know what that grease fitting was for. Runt told him, 'Don't worry, it's something that's going to help it.' Hoss couldn't wait to tell people about it. But Runt was just messing around with him. It didn't really do anything."
For NASCAR Winston Cup teams in the 1970s, though, the clear performance booster of choice was nitrous oxide, or NO2. Known as laughing gas and used for years as a medical sedative, nitrous oxide injected into an internal combustion engine generates a tremendous horsepower boost -- upwards of 100 horsepower over a short period. In the mid-1970s, many NASCAR Winston Cup teams hid nitrous oxide canisters in the bodies and frames of their cars. Though a tank might last long enough for only 30 to 40 seconds, used at the right time, it could mean the difference between winning and losing.
Nitrous oxide was especially popular during qualifying, when it could mean the difference between sitting on the pole and missing the race entirely. The biggest nitrous oxide scandal occurred in 1976, at the biggest race of the season, the Daytona 500. Pole-sitter A. J. Foyt and second-qualifier Darrell Waltrip both had their times disallowed after nitrous oxide was found in their respective cars. During the same race, Dave Marcis's qualifying time was also disallowed because he was caught with a movable air deflector in his car, a device that could reduce drag and make his car faster.
Foyt and NASCAR President Bill France Jr., who had succeeded his father as NASCAR's leader in 1972, nearly came to blows at Daytona back then, with the volatile Texan proclaiming he hadn't used nitrous oxide. Twenty-five years later, prior to the running of the 2001 Daytona 500, Foyt still maintained he didn't use the performance-enhancing substance. "He's not talking to anybody about it, but if he was, he'd tell you the same thing he did back then: He didn't do it," said team spokesman Michael Rompf.
The ever-effusive Waltrip, however, admitted his team had nitrous in the car. "If you don't cheat, you look like an idiot. If you do it and you don't get caught, you look like a hero. If you do it and get caught, you look like a dope. Put me in the category where I belong," he said at the time.
Prior to the 2000 running of the Brickyard 400, Waltrip spilled the whole story. "We went to Daytona and (crew chief) Mario Rossi took what we called the wedge bar and made that into a cylinder and packed it full of nitrous," he told reporters Robin Miller and Curt Cavin of the Indianapolis Star. But NASCAR officials became suspicious of Foyt and Waltrip when their practice times were a second per lap slower than their qualifying speeds.
"So here comes NASCAR. They took my car into the inspection room and had people crawl all over it. We were trying not to laugh, but it was hard because they were hanging on that bar with the nitrous," Waltrip said. "Finally, Bill France Sr. and Bill Gazaway came over and said if we didn't tell them where the nitrous was, they were going to go get the saw and cut every bar on the car out. Rossi got nervous they might cut into something and blow themselves up, so he told them where it was."
Recommended reading!
By the 1970s, most every NASCAR team seemed to have something or other up its sleeve. The teams all saved their best tricks for the Daytona 500, then as now the most important race of the year. Daytona drew the most attention and sponsor interest, got the most exposure, and paid extremely well. But in those days, the annual January testing at the 2.5-mile superspeedway was not closely supervised by NASCAR, and cars didn't have to test in legal trim. If a team was looking for a sponsor prior to Daytona and wanted to generate some buzz, all it had to do was bolt in a 500-cubic-inch motor for a January test session and run some blisteringly fast lap times. All of a sudden the word would get around about how fast it was running. There was no better or quicker way to attract a sponsor's dollars.
And the rules of the era only fed into the temptation to fudge the legality of your car. In an effort to equalize competition among the various makes and hold speeds as well, NASCAR stepped up its use of restrictor plates. The way a restrictor plate works is very simple: It is a machined flat aluminum plate that fits between the carburetor and intake manifold and uses small-diameter openings to limit the amount of fuel-air mixture that flows from the carburetor into the engine, drastically reducing horsepower. Although NASCAR has used a variety of different sizes and configurations of restrictor plates over the years, in the contemporary motors used today at superspeedways, they cut horsepower from about 780 to 400.
"When they first started putting the plates on the cars, when I drove for Holman-Moody, old Jake (Elder) had a big restrictor plate taped up under the fan cover," recalled David Pearson of the early 1970s. "Back then NASCAR would hand you the plate and you'd turn around and put it on. Old Jake just turned right around and stuck the one NASCAR gave him up under the fan cover and pulled the other one out and put it on the car. Looking at it, you couldn't tell the difference. You can take a knife and go around those holes in the restrictor plate, open them up just a little and pick up 10 horsepower. We run the 125-milers (Daytona 500 qualifying races) that way. NASCAR came over and said they wanted to see it. All they wanted to do was look down in the carburetor and see that the plate was still on it. Jake got mad and jerked the seal off. They said, well since you broke the seal just go ahead and take the carburetor off. If he hadn't done that we would have gotten away with it. But all I was doing was looking in my mirror and driving just fast enough to stay in front of them. I could have run a lot faster, but you've got to use your head when you're doing something like that. But we got caught. There has been a lot of cheating going on with the plate. I would say there still are people cheating with it someway, somehow."
Another master manipulator of the restrictor plate was former car owner Hoss Ellington, who campaigned correct usage in racing cars for Sterling Marlin and the late Tim Richmond, as well as Charlie Glotzbach's disqualified 1973 Charlotte car, among others. His most famous car was the one Donnie Allison drove in 1979, when he crashed with Cale Yarborough going for the win on the last lap of the Daytona 500.
In 1986, Marlin's Ellington-owned Chevrolet Monte Carlo was penalized for having an illegal fuel cooling system prior to the Firecracker 400 at Daytona in July. Marlin's car had a hidden padded metal box filled with dry ice and a spiraled fuel line that ran through it. The dry ice cooled the fuel, making it more dense, so it would generate additional horsepower under combustion
.
Pearson, who drove briefly for Ellington, said the outspoken owner loved the conspiracy aspect of cheating but was not mechanically inclined himself. "Hoss never did know what to do," Pearson said. "(Engine builder) Runt (Pittman) was the main one on that car. He's the one who did all the cheating and stuff. I know one time when I drove his car, Runt took a grease fitting and screwed a hole for it in the intake manifold. Hoss couldn't stand it. He wanted to know what that grease fitting was for. Runt told him, 'Don't worry, it's something that's going to help it.' Hoss couldn't wait to tell people about it. But Runt was just messing around with him. It didn't really do anything."
For NASCAR Winston Cup teams in the 1970s, though, the clear performance booster of choice was nitrous oxide, or NO2. Known as laughing gas and used for years as a medical sedative, nitrous oxide injected into an internal combustion engine generates a tremendous horsepower boost -- upwards of 100 horsepower over a short period. In the mid-1970s, many NASCAR Winston Cup teams hid nitrous oxide canisters in the bodies and frames of their cars. Though a tank might last long enough for only 30 to 40 seconds, used at the right time, it could mean the difference between winning and losing.
Nitrous oxide was especially popular during qualifying, when it could mean the difference between sitting on the pole and missing the race entirely. The biggest nitrous oxide scandal occurred in 1976, at the biggest race of the season, the Daytona 500. Pole-sitter A. J. Foyt and second-qualifier Darrell Waltrip both had their times disallowed after nitrous oxide was found in their respective cars. During the same race, Dave Marcis's qualifying time was also disallowed because he was caught with a movable air deflector in his car, a device that could reduce drag and make his car faster.
Foyt and NASCAR President Bill France Jr., who had succeeded his father as NASCAR's leader in 1972, nearly came to blows at Daytona back then, with the volatile Texan proclaiming he hadn't used nitrous oxide. Twenty-five years later, prior to the running of the 2001 Daytona 500, Foyt still maintained he didn't use the performance-enhancing substance. "He's not talking to anybody about it, but if he was, he'd tell you the same thing he did back then: He didn't do it," said team spokesman Michael Rompf.
The ever-effusive Waltrip, however, admitted his team had nitrous in the car. "If you don't cheat, you look like an idiot. If you do it and you don't get caught, you look like a hero. If you do it and get caught, you look like a dope. Put me in the category where I belong," he said at the time.
Prior to the 2000 running of the Brickyard 400, Waltrip spilled the whole story. "We went to Daytona and (crew chief) Mario Rossi took what we called the wedge bar and made that into a cylinder and packed it full of nitrous," he told reporters Robin Miller and Curt Cavin of the Indianapolis Star. But NASCAR officials became suspicious of Foyt and Waltrip when their practice times were a second per lap slower than their qualifying speeds.
"So here comes NASCAR. They took my car into the inspection room and had people crawl all over it. We were trying not to laugh, but it was hard because they were hanging on that bar with the nitrous," Waltrip said. "Finally, Bill France Sr. and Bill Gazaway came over and said if we didn't tell them where the nitrous was, they were going to go get the saw and cut every bar on the car out. Rossi got nervous they might cut into something and blow themselves up, so he told them where it was."
Thanks HS 