Indy Racing League ‘09 finale may be at LVMS

By Ron Kantowski

Monday, June 30, 2008 | 11:05 p.m.

NOW:

It's not true that when Texas Motor Speedway president Eddie Gossage starts pulling strings that the arms of Chris Powell, his counterpart at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, begin to move.

But it is true that Gossage is negotiating a five-race deal for Bruton Smith's Speedway Motorsports Inc. chain of fine auto racing facilities that could have the Indy Racing League returning to Las Vegas for its series finale here beginning next year.

The IRL recently confirmed it will hold its championship banquet in Las Vegas this year and would like to make that a standing deal. And while it is possible to hold a banquet here without a season-ending race, that wouldn't be nearly as cool.

"Gentlemen, start your chicken dinners?" I think not.

When it comes to history, the IRL's with Las Vegas is not so long and storied. The series has previously raced at Las Vegas Motor Speedway five times with limited success. But that was when most of the stars of open-wheel racing competed in the rival Champ Car series. With that series having folded like a broken suspension upright, all the fast guys with funny-sounding last names -- and Danica Patrick -- are now competing in the IRL.

Veteran Las Vegas Indy-car fans also may recall this wouldn't be the first time the sport held its season finale and awards banquet in Las Vegas. That also was the case in 1984, when the last Caesars Palace Grand Prix was held on a temporary circuit that is now the Forum Shops.

----- Team USA and Nike unveiled the basketball team's new uniforms Monday. Even though they don't look old school, like the Flint Tropics', I kind of dig them. Especially the white ones that sort of make Kobe Bryant look like an Apollo astronaut, minus the helmet, lunar rover manual and Tang.

----- This is why trusting a politically correct, religiously right spell-check program isn't always best. On Sunday, sprinter Tyson Gay ran the 100 meters in a fastest-ever time of 9.68 seconds. But the American Family Association Web site did not call him Gay, or even moderately happy. Instead, it called him ... well, just click here .

THEN:

Two things I'll never forget about the 1984 Caesars Palace Grand Prix, which I witnessed as a New Mexican, three years before moving to Las Vegas.

The first is the awesome sound a turbocharged March-Cosworth makes when it reverberates off the facade of the Imperial Palace.

The second is what race winner Tom Sneva said after he and Al Unser Sr. tangled while dueling for the lead, and the latter expressed his displeasure with the former junior high school principal from the Pacific Northwest by displaying a certain finger.

"I just thought he was reminding me what position I was in," Sneva said.