2012 Daytona 500: February 26, 1PM EST on Fox

[sharkythesharkdogg]

And they actually had fuel injection for a very brief time back in the late 1950s, before switching back to carburetors.

You could very well be correct. I'm not certain. With the time frame of the 1950's I can make two basic assumptions though.

Nascar in the 50's was a more true to form "stock car" auto sport. The brands being run hadn't seen nearly the level of streamline homologation of the cars that we see today. That means that if there were cars with fuel injection it was manufacturer specific.

That time frame also means that it was mechanical fuel injection, and there's a reason you don't see mechanical fuel injection today. It was finicky and unreliable.

The fuel injection offered on ALL modern cars (since sometime in the 1990's) is electronic fuel injection or "EFI". It's a much more complex and advanced system than either a carburetor or mechanical fuel injection. The various sensors, injectors, and other devices used with EFI allow for a much more tailored amount of fuel delivered across the cylinders of a motor, as oppose to the "spray and pray" method of traditional carburetors.

Bascially, comparing mechanical fuel injection to EFI is like comparing a mechanical wind up watch to a modern digital watch with several built in functions.