1997 NASCAR Winston Cup Series (Start Your Engines!)

The 1997 NASCAR Winston Cup Series was the 49th season of professional stock car racing in the United States and the 26th modern-era Cup series season.

Technical changes
1997 saw the first major changes to the cars since 1981 outside of the bodies. After years of research and development dating back to 1989, the new SAFER Car made its competition debut at the 1997 Save Mart Supermarkets 300 at Sears Point Raceway.

The new car had multiple safety enhancements, as well as a new body that better reflected the car design trends of the day. Compared to the "Legacy Car" that had been used from 1981 to 1996, the SAFER Car was more aerodynamic, as well as more aero-sensitive.

One of the goals of the SAFER Car was also to provide a universal body for all track types. Between 1989 and 1996, manufacturers had been using different models of car for the restrictor-plate tracks (Daytona, Talladega, Coca-Cola, and San Jose) in order to compensate for the restrictor plates. Chrysler (more specifically their star team, Pacific Coast Racing) had started this trend in 1989 by using the Dodge Daytona instead of the Chrysler LeBaron at plate tracks. Chevrolet followed in 1990 with the Camaro, which was used until the second half of 1992 when it was replaced by the Beretta. Ford began using the Mustang at plate tracks in 1992, and Pontiac finally jumped on the bandwagon with the Sunfire in 1994. Mercury used the Cougar at all tracks, and Buick and Oldsmobile, whose bases had been cannibalized by Ford and Chrysler, lacked the support to field their own "Aero Warriors", which was a factor in them leaving in 1991 and 1992, respectively.

For 1997, there were six manufacturers:


 * Chevrolet continued using the Monte Carlo
 * Ford used the Thunderbird in its final year of competition due to its imminent discontinuation
 * Chrysler abandoned both the now-discontinued LeBaron (which in the final two years of the Legacy Car had been officially listed as the "Chrysler Cirrus", even though LeBaron sheetmetal was still being used) and the Dodge Daytona (which had been discontinued in February 1993, yet continued running with the Daytona nameplate due to Dodge not having any other suitable cars) in favor of the Dodge Avenger, which had been used in ARCA since 1995, and in IROC in 1994 and 1995
 * Pontiac continued using the Grand Prix
 * Mercury switched from the Cougar to the recently-facelifted Sable; the Sable was controversial upon its introduction due to being a four-door sedan, which gave it a much-different shape from the other cars in the field that was more aerodynamic
 * Oldsmobile made a quiet comeback with the Alero; the cars were actually closer to the Intrigue, as it was built on the GM W Platform, which was also used by that year's Pontiac Grand Prix; however, the Intrigue name was ineligible under NASCAR's homologation rules due to the fact it wouldn't start production until May 5, 1997; only three full-time teams (American Equipment Racing, Andy Petree Racing, and Diamond Ridge Racing) ran Oldsmobiles full-time (ostensibly because Chevrolet had duped them into doing so as pretense for getting rid of lower-priority teams, thus allowing them to focus their resources on Hendrick, Childress, and Morgan-McClure), but they were very popular with part-time teams who could no longer rely on bigger teams selling them the previous years' Chevrolet or Pontiac due to NASCAR illegalizing the use of the Legacy Car, which was now considered a "death trap" compared to the SAFER Car; this was due to Oldsmobile sheetmetal being the cheapest; at the same time, Oldsmobile stated they wanted absolutely nothing to do with engine development, telling any teams who elected to run the Alero that they were on their own; the three full-time teams got around this by using Chevrolet and Pontiac engine parts due to the fact GM engines shared many common parts, but part-time teams who lacked this luxury resorted to buying up Oldsmobiles from Busch and ARCA teams that had either switched to other manufacturers or had shut down; many compared this practice to what Pacific Coast Racing did in the mid-1980s when they lost factory support from Chrysler, but unlike PCR, these teams lacked the resources and drive to create viable "Frankenstein's cars"