TALLADEGA, Ala. -- Forty-some cars scream around Turns 3 and 4 doing 190 mph with, literally, inches separating them. The cars are so close that something as small as a twitch or a sneeze would wreak havoc on the field. Something as little as fishtailing out of a corner could send as many as a dozen cars hurtling at the wall.

This goes on for 500 miles as drivers clench their teeth and pray for safety.

Welcome to present-day superspeedway racing where, particularly here at Talladega Superspeedway, the conditions are so nerve-wracking that NASCAR has tried four different rules packages in the last four races at the track.

The primary objective: Break up the packs and give drivers a little more room. The secondary objective: Make the drivers race their cars, not just aim them in a circle.

In the garage area, where everyone is an expert, several drivers, crew chiefs and owners offered opinions on ways to break up the packs. But before we explore them, here is a quick tutorial on how the conditions came about.

Too fast for comfort
In 1987, Bill Elliott went barreling around Talladega at a record 212.809 mph and about half the drivers in the garage started clamoring for NASCAR to slow the cars down. That same weekend, Bobby Allison's car ran up the wall and teetered on the fence before falling back to the track.

Although Allison was not seriously injured and no one else was, either, the thought of what could have happened if Allison's car cleared the fence and ran into the thousands of helpless fans in the grandstands was so horrifying that NASCAR knew speeds needed to come down.

For the next couple races at superspeedways -- Daytona International Speedway and Talladega -- the Winston Cup Series cars were equipped with smaller carburetors. This made good cars mediocre and, therefore, closed the gap between bad cars and good cars. Fans and drivers shared disappointment in the fact that talent ceased being an issue.

	Crashes are a danger at Talladega, even in Happy Hour.

That's when, for the 1988 Daytona 500, stock-car racing's most popular series began restrictor plate racing. The restrictor plate limits the amount of air that goes into the carburetor and, thereby, limits the horsepower by as much as 20 to 30 percent. At first, it was acceptable. The speeds were down and the cars were spread out, but as teams put more money into its operations and as technology advanced, the tight bunches began occurring in the mid-1990s.

Parity produces tight spots
When restrictor plate racing was first introduced, the 43rd car in the field was a world away from being as good as the first car in the field. That allowed the good cars to race together at the front of the pack and left the OK-to-bad cars spread out behind them. Today, the gap between first and 43rd is so much smaller, that putting a uniform ceiling on horsepower for every race car leaves them all in the same place -- bunched up in a tight pack.

Which brings us to NASCAR's primary objective -- breaking up the bunches. In speaking with several sources in the garage, there are four major changes that could accomplish this.