AND......

They get the BIG PLATE!!!

NASCAR is relaxing some of its rules this season, and encouraging drivers to show more aggression and emotion, in large part to answer a growing fan sentiment that the sport had gone stale.

"There's an age old saying that NASCAR, 'If you ain't rubbing, you ain't racing,' " NASCAR president Mike Helton said Thursday. "I think that's what the NASCAR fan, the NASCAR stakeholders all bought into, and all expect."

The first change will be evident when the season opens next month at Daytona International Speedway, where restrictions on bump-drafting will be lifted and horsepower will be increased by the use of the largest restrictor plate since 1989.

NASCAR had been slowly tightening its tolerance on bumping at Daytona and Talladega -- the two biggest and fastest tracks in the series, where the horsepower-sapping restrictor plates are used to control speeds -- and it graduated into an outright ban issued the morning of the October race at Talladega. The edict sucked the drama out of what's typically one of the most exciting races of the year, and was the final straw for many race fans who had grown tired of watered-down racing.