Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

NASCAR postmortem: Fans are about as tough as the competitors

Kobalt Tools 400

John Katsilometes

Setting pace for the race in Turn 4.

Kobalt Tools 400: From the grandstand

Fans are introduced to the car used in the Richard Petty Driving Experience at LVMS. Launch slideshow »

Carl Edwards Wins Kobalt 400

Carl Edwards (99) celebrates in Victory Lane after winning the Kobalt Tools 400 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series auto race at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway Sunday, March 6, 2011. Launch slideshow »
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The line to the Bank of America ATM, where dreams come true.

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Fans in the concourse catch up on the action on one of the Speedway monitors before returning to their seats.

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By the numbers: How we followed the action.

So it was a dangling air hose that felled Tony Stewart. These hoses go for about $30 at Autozone. But failing to have such a hose properly clamped to his car as he burst from a midrace pit stop cost Stewart a victory worth more than $400,000.

The triumph, the money and the wrench-shaped championship trophy went instead to Agent 99 Carl Edwards, described as such for his easy-to-locate Ford Fusion painted with that number.

The hosing of Stewart was the pivotal moment in Sunday’s Kobalt Tools 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, but it was lost on most of us sitting in the Dale Earnhardt Terrace as we watched the really fast stock cars shriek out of Turn 4 and down the front straightaway.

It was clear that on the 151st lap, something unexpected had forced Stewart from the lead, where he had driven with numbing efficiency for almost the entire race, to the back of the field.

I asked the race fans seated nearby. What happened to Stewart? Why was he being pushed to the back of the class, other than he is Tony Stewart and he sometimes runs afoul of the rules? No one knew. You could not hear any updates on the speedway’s sound system, which is no match for the rumble and grumble of more than 40 high-performance race engines. Those who did know what was going on were wearing headphones they either owned or purchased at the track to more effectively follow the circular circus unfolding on the track.

Auto racing is the rare sport where you are not quite able to follow in detail what is happening on the track without some sort of technical augmentation. Imagine watching a UNLV basketball game at the Thomas & Mack Center, and suddenly the Rebels are hit with consecutive technical fouls and no one understands why it happened (though many would guess that the Ts are a late-arriving penalty issued by the NCAA against Jerry Tarkanian).

I learned of this absence of information in racing the past two years at the Indy 500, which is equipped with a sound system that would be better suited for a drive-in movie theater than a superspeedway. I learned, too, at Indy (and even at the dirt tracks in Northern California, where I covered sprint car racing for years) that you find no more devoted fans than those who track motor sports.

They put up with anything, even a sport that is inherently so loud that it drowns out the very description of the action.

Reinforced during my daylong sojourn to LVMS Sunday was that race fans are uncommonly tough and tolerant. Though I’ve attended a few major events at the superspeedway, including the facility’s first race in September 1996 (an Indy Racing League showcase won by Richie Hearn), I’ve not sat in the grandstands until Sunday’s race.

It was fun, but conditionally so. In these types of superspeedway events, and Sprint Cup races are always that, you have got to plan for some measure of discomfort and inconvenience.

Even with a vastly improved scheme to improve traffic flow to and from the LVMS, it’s still a hike to drive to the speedway – it can take an hour from Southern Highlands even on days when more than 140,000 fans are not flocking to the facility. This type of travel commitment doesn’t play well in a city where waiting 10 minutes for a resort valet attendant to return a vehicle is considered unacceptable customer service.

The walk from any LVMS parking lot to the speedway is long, and even reaching shuttles from the grandstands requires a trek over some distance. This is the rare event where the term, “Beat up from the feet up,” applies as much to the fans as participants.

It can get blustery out there, too, and the weather is often unpredictable. There seemed to be as many fans wearing shorts as sweatshirts. Midmorning it seemed we might be in for a chill, but by the 100-lap mark, fans were smearing sunscreen across their necks, lest they turn red.

The continual drone of the engines makes conducting a sustained conversation nearly impossible, which is to be expected when you’re watching dozens of cars screaming around a track at 180 mph. But more surprising was that in a sport so thirsty for merchandise and concession sales, merchants inside the track could not process credit card or debit card transactions. Dang, man, I need this $10 program! Of course, when the crowd exceeds 100,000, there can’t be enough ATMs on-site, and Sunday there was the farcical attempt by beer vendors to sell brews to those waiting in the long line at the Bank of America cash machines.

Finally, one would-be patron cried out, “I’ll buy a beer if you’ll take my card!”

“Can’t help you, brother,” was the response.

That’s just how it is at the speedway. It is not a sport for the weak-willed, or those who need their tushies powdered. As I watched Edwards finish off his victory, I remembered covering a World of Outlaws event, long ago on a quarter-mile clay oval up in Chico, Calif. I noticed fans covering their beer cups with their hands as the open-wheeled sprint cars blazed by. After a few laps, I asked one of the fans seated down close to the track why this was.

“So you don’t get dirt in your beer,” he said. “These cars spray clay on every lap.”

As we talked, I was popped in the cheek by a big chunk of clay the size of a walnut. The offending driver was World of Outlaws star Steve Kinser, who went on to win that night’s main event.

It was a thrilling race, if I remember it right, but I never did hear his name called.

Follow John Katsilometes on Twitter at twitter.com/JohnnyKats. Also, follow Kats With the Dish at twitter.com/KatsWithTheDish.

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