Mike Helton emerged from his winter den this morning just to take a look-see around at the ticket sales office for the Gatorade Twin Duels at Daytona.  A long, mustachioed shadow fell on the ground outside the famed NASCAR “trailer” in which Helton takes his winter repose, indicating to race fans all over the world that restrictor plates would be used at superspeedways for another ten months.

“When I see a white-hot race engine running at 850 horses at Daytona I just have one thought,” Mike Helton’s Moustache told us, “and that thought is that somebody better put a lid on that sonuvabitch.  No one in his right mind wants to watch these cars go too fast, that’s for sure.”

We pressed Helton’s moustache on why he thinks race fans are afraid of fast racing.

“Well, it’s dangerous, for one thing.”

Considering that no one thinks NASCAR is the safest of sports, we dug a little deeper.

Mike Helton’s Moustache quickly capitulated to our line of intense questioning.  “OK, OK, I’ll come clean with you, just stop pestering me.  Restrictor plates are all part of our business strategy.  It’s all about the money.”

Go on, we said, and Mike Helton’s Moustache quickly spilled the beans, like so many lugnuts falling to the concrete in Matt Kenseth’s pit box.

“The cars go so darned fast on those big tracks that the race was over too soon, for one thing.  You ever try to sell advertising at 214 miles per hour, boy?  I didn’t think so.  No one can sell ads that fast.  Then there is one more advantage.  When the cars all run together, we can fit more on them into a single television shot.  The more cars we squeeze in there, the more ads we can put on your teevee screen at home.  I know, I know — it’s diabolical.”

So NASCAR actually encourages bump-drafting?

“Hell, yes, we do.  But not so much bump-drafting that you rub the ads off the bumpers.”

Makes sense to us, we said.  Anything else you’d like to get off your moustache?

“I am a mean, mean moustache.  I am so mean, that when I appear in the charity spots for Autism Speaks, they write it off as a loss for a tax deduction.  I’m one mean dude.”

Oh, yeah.  We know.