Columnist Ron Kantowski: Who needs restrictor plates?

Friday, March 2, 2001 | 10:44 a.m.

Ron Kantowski is the sports editor at the Las Vegas Sun. Reach him at 259-4088 or ron@lasvegassun.com.

Any race fans who are independently wealthy, took last Monday morning off or have a television monitor mounted on the wall above their work station (and here you thought the guy who drives Miss Winston to and from the track had a cushy job) witnessed a finish as good as it gets in NASCAR.

During the closing laps of the Dura Lube 400 at Rockingham, Bobby Labonte ran down race leader Steve Park as if the Pennzoil driver was Burt Reynolds, he was Jackie Gleason and North Carolina Motor Speedway was the soundstage for another "Smokey and the Bandit" movie.

With five laps to go, the relentless Labonte finally pulled up on Park's spoiler. The two bobbed and weaved and juked and jived for five miles. They traded more paint than Sherwin Williams at a Dutch Boy convention. Or vice versa.

The high-speed ballet ended with Park in front, most of the sheet metal still intact, and the fans in the grandstand on their feet.

Let's hope the guys in the NASCAR suites, the ones who make the rules, were paying attention.

Maybe it's the racing purist in me, but where is it written that you need 38-car drafts, power-sapping carburetor restrictor plates and bogus field-bunching yellow flags with two laps to go to make auto racing compelling for the ticket-buying public?

On Monday, there were 13 cars running on the lead lap at the end of the race. But only two had a chance to win. And not once did I see a crew chief running down the pit lane like Monty Hall on "Let's Make a Deal." Unlike at Daytona, it wasn't necessary to cut a secret pact prior to pitting or trying to pass.

Forget about what Jay has in the box or what's behind Door No. 2. At Rockingham, all that mattered was what you had under the hood or who you had behind the wheel.

That's racin' folks. Back in the smokes-rolled-up-in-the-T-shirt days, I doubt that Fireball Roberts ever sent a man down to Junior Johnson's pit to discuss drafting strategy.

Monday's enthralling finish showed that in some regards, maybe less is more in NASCAR. For instance, when you have only two cars running nose-to-tail on the white flag lap (instead of a dozen or more), the potential for disaster is exponentially reduced.

But why not take it a step further?

NASCAR is one of the few racing series that finds it necessary to turn the starting grid into a used car lot. In Formula One, CART and the Indy Racing League, with rare exception do they start more than 24 cars. In NASCAR, as many as 43 get the green flag. That seems like overkill, given no more than a third of the field has a decent chance of winning.

By starting 24 or 30 cars instead of nearly four dozen, the fast guys would have a little more room to maneuver. The slow guys would be running in the Busch Series on Saturday, where they could get more seasoning. In that scenario, there would be fewer unsponsored cars just running around and collecting points on Sunday. Not to mention a lot fewer middle fingers being extended through the side netting.

Opinions are like T-shirts with the late Dale Earnhardt's picture on them: Everybody has one. Mine is that NASCAR could make its races safer and perhaps even better without spending so much as a single penny.