Life is good in near-perfect moments like this, where your mind, body and nature commune together in unison as one elated spirit.

Now, imagine the same scenario, only this time your breathing becomes labored as your windpipe involuntarily closes slightly. You try to gulp more air in, but your body still feels robbed of the maximum amount it wants. The more air you need, the less you get.

As a result, your heart and lungs work harder, churning and pushing your body to further physical limits. You keep going, but the harder you run, the more exerted you feel.

Sooner or later, you're going to stop. Your heart and body are going to give up, much like an engine locking up when it's pushed past its red-line limit.

That's the type of situation Winston Cup drivers are faced with each time they take to the track at Daytona International Speedway and Talladega Superspeedway, where Dale Earnhardt Jr. won last Sunday's EA Sports 500. For it is only at those two tracks NASCAR mandates artificial speed-robbing devices known as restrictor plates all in the supposed name of safety.

Or, as the drivers themselves call them, "restrictive plates" -- or much more ungentlemanly terms that aren't fit to print here.

Or, the way I like to describe it: restrictor plate racing is like a carburetor with asthma. It can't catch its breath.

In theory, NASCAR mandated restrictor plates to lower speeds in an effort to make cars operate more "safely" on the super-fast, high-banked surfaces at Daytona and Talladega. When Bill Elliott turned a 212.809 mph lap around Talladega's 2.66-mile tri-oval layout on April 30, 1987, it forever changed Winston Cup racing as we know it.

Fearing ever-advancing speeds were getting out of hand, and would ultimately lead to death or serious injury, NASCAR stepped in with restrictor plates, which are devices that are placed atop carburetors to limit the amount of air and fuel that passes through. Ergo, speeds dropped, and theoretically, safety improved.

However, things haven't exactly panned out that way. Since restrictor plates were first placed in use, there have been numerous revisions and modifications, along with almost constant tweaking of aerodynamic rules on car bodies to keep them, at least in theory, glued more to the track so they don't become airborne.

It seems the harder NASCAR works at trying to make things safer, the less safe racing becomes. And then NASCAR finds itself right back at where it started -- with even more safety concerns that lead to even more tweaking. It's a vicious circle that won't end.

There's no question NASCAR's noble intentions have backfired. Restrictor plates keep cars artificially limited on speed and horsepower, thus allowing cars to bunch up and literally run in carbon copy fashion, much like the identically tuned cars of the IROC series. And when that happens, it is inevitable that cars are going to come together in massive multiple-vehicle wrecks like the 16-car mishap in Sunday's race.

Unfortunately, that type of "big crash" has become the norm at Talladega, and to a lesser extent at Daytona. With cars as tightly bunched together as they are, just one slight bobble at the lead or in the middle of a pack can suddenly turn tight racing into a chain-reaction demolition derby.

Obviously, restrictor plate racing just isn't working. Winston Cup drivers don't like it, team owners and crew chiefs don't like it, reporters don't like it, and neither do fans. More often than not, particularly at Talladega, fans sit and watch a race where perhaps the first 90 percent of it is boring, only to usually wind up finishing with a big wreck and exciting dash to the finish, much like Sunday's event where 16 cars collided and Earnhardt Jr. snuck past Tony Stewart for the last-lap victory.

Sunday was perhaps the straw that broke the camel's back, or at least that of the drivers as a collective group. Almost all of them marched in unison upon NASCAR's administration trailer after the race, demanding a meeting with sanctioning body president Mike Helton and other officials to vent their frustrations.

The drivers have many times performed the same futile exercise in the past, but something different happened this time: NASCAR listened.

And now, finally, after spending years talking up its advantages and supposed "safety benefits," NASCAR says it doesn't like restrictor plate racing all that much, either. It plans on revisiting the entire concept and make whatever changes it deems necessary to enhance safety first, and potentially open its ears even more to driver complaints.

So what should NASCAR do now?

As Sterling Marlin so eloquently put it after Sunday's race, "Take the damn plates off!"

That's perhaps the most simplistic, yet effective, answer to the whole dilemma. But will that solve the problem entirely? No, I don't think so, at least not in the short-term. Daytona and Talladega, frankly, are tracks that are too fast for their own good. The problem may lie more in the tracks themselves than artificial speed-robbing devices like restrictor plates.

My suggestion to NASCAR is perhaps as simplistic as just taking the damn plates off, as Marlin said. Why not simply make the 2002 season plate-free? That's four races without plates. See how the racing, the competitiveness, and most importantly, the safety, is.

And take notes, lots of notes!

Many of today's drivers were just breaking into Winston Cup racing when restrictor plates were mandated back in the late 1980s. They may find after four plate-free races that perhaps speeds are too fast, that perhaps safety is too severely impacted, that perhaps plate racing is the way to go, after all.

At the same time, if an unfortunate incident does happen in one of next season's non-plate races, it might provide enough ammunition for NASCAR to reinstate restrictor plates ad infinitum.

To use a well-worn adage, "nothing ventured, nothing gained." We've tried it with plates for 14 years; let's try it without. If NASCAR ventures back into ancient plate-free territory, it may find something else that could help its quest for safer racing in the process even more.

And then we'll all ask, "Why did it take this long?"