On May 3, 1987, Bobby Allison’s crash at Talladega Superspeedway became a watershed moment for NASCAR, thrusting the sport into a heated debate over safety versus spectacle. During the Winston 500, Allison’s No. 22 Buick was running in the lead draft at over 210 mph when a blown engine and a cut right-rear tire sent the car spinning. The vehicle snapped into a 180-degree turn, lifted off the track, and smashed into the catch fence. The race was halted for nearly three hours to repair the fence, underscoring the severity of the incident.

By 1988, restrictor plates—metal devices that limit airflow to the engine, reducing power from around 750 HP to 400 HP—became mandatory at superspeedways. This shift sparked controversy, as some fans and drivers lamented the loss of raw speed, while others praised the focus on safety. Allison’s incident was the catalyst, proving that unchecked horsepower was a recipe for disaster. Not just for the drivers, but for the fans in the grandstands.

And yet, the June 9, 2004, test felt like the climax of a two-decade arc of high-speed drama that began in 1988. The only objective here was that NASCAR wanted to improve radio communication at high speed, and they weren’t looking to remove the restrictor plate. Rusty Wallace was one of the few drivers in the modern era to experience what it felt like to pilot a car on a superspeedway that was unhinged and not restricted.

On June 9, 2004, Rusty Wallace took to Talladega Superspeedway in a Penske Dodge for a high-stakes test sanctioned by NASCAR. Unrestricted, the engine generated 750 horsepower—nearly double the plate-limited 400 HP. He recorded a lap speed of 216.309 mph and hit a blistering 242 mph on the front straightaway, numbers that echoed the pre-restrictor-plate era. Wallace detailed this harrowing experience on brother Kenny Wallace’s YouTube channel on 15 Mar 2024.

“I come down the front straightaway way too hard at 221 mph. Come off Turn 3, that damn thing went into complete hyperplane mode. No lie. I got the front wheels turn, and the front end’s got lift in it. It slid from the bottom of the track all the way up to the wall and crossed the start-finish line at 242 miles an hour.” The term “hyperplane mode” wasn’t hyperbole. At 242 mph, aerodynamic forces violently lifted the chassis, making steering inputs nearly useless. Wallace immediately pitted, telling his crew. Engineers made frantic adjustments, inserting spring rubbers to raise the rear, pulling front fenders out ¾ inch for downforce, and bolting on fresh tires.

Rusty then recalled, “I went back out, flew around here one lap at 234 [mph], then it ran 241. I felt the vibration, throttled back. In two laps, it ripped all the rubber off the right front tire. It was going that damn fast.” This wasn’t racing; it was survival physics. The test proved two critical truths: tires couldn’t withstand 240+ mph centrifugal forces, and cars became aerodynamically unstable above 210 mph. Wallace’s verdict was unequivocal: Restrictor plates, however unpopular, were non-negotiable for survival, a reality underscored by Allison’s 1987 crash and his own 1993 Talladega flip.

It has been almost two decades since that test at Dega, but the conversation surrounding speeds and horsepower on the NASCAR car isn’t going away.

NASCAR is willing to bump the power on the Next Gen car

The car that Rusty Wallace piloted back in 2004 was the Gen 4 car and used to produce around 750 to 800 horsepower unrestricted. But that power is significantly reduced with the Next Gen model, which is capped out at 670, and falls down to 510 on superspeedway, along with a 7-inch rear spoiler. This was a spec car where all the teams had the same parts and pieces from a NASCAR-registered third-party vendor. The idea was to bring parity to the field and allow smaller teams to compete with the top dogs, and that idea hasn’t exactly been a huge hit.

Fuel Mileage racing on tracks like Talladega and Daytona has become the norm, whereas short-ovals have turned into a snooze fest. Veteran drivers like Denny Hamlin and Kevin Harvick have been advocating for increased power to the engines. Not just the drivers, but the fans who have witnessed the car for three years straight, believed that more horsepower on the Gen 7 car is the way forward. Initially, NASCAR didn’t pay attention to these demands, but something has changed in 2025.

NASCAR SVP of competition, Elton Sawyer, dropped a major update on the details behind increasing the engine power on the Gen 7 car. “We are working closely with all the stakeholders in the industry, and as I said, the collaboration has been better than ever in our sport on all topics. This particular one had a team owner council meeting last week, came up and we discussed that. John Probst had a conversation with our engine builder to see what we could do, how that would look and what changes would need to be made,” he said this on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.

Well, if we are to go by the murmurs across the Cup garage, the leap is going to be from 670 to 750 horsepower. While it may not change the on-track product completely, NASCAR is willing to work on the issue and build on these new adjustments when they roll out.