LVMS gears up for off-season

Friday, Nov. 8, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.

With Wednesday night's hugely successful World of Outlaws show marking the end of Las Vegas Motor Speedway's first and frenetic three-month season, track officials will have roughly three months to address their biggest concerns:

Getting the place finished -- or at least more finished -- and getting more races on next year's schedule.

LVMS president Richie Clyne said Wednesday night that when the WoO drivers return next Feb. 8-9, most if not all amenities at the new half-mile clay track should be in place. Ditto for the big 1.5-mile superspeedway, which will rumble back to life next March 16 with what promises to a big NASCAR Busch Grand National offering.

Of course, there will be activity in the form of off-season testing prior to spectator events resuming. But the place where the wheels may turn fastest is Clyne's office, where the hands-on LVMS president continues to woo the movers and shakers of the various sanctioning bodies.

A good bet right now is that LVMS will host not one but two Indy Racing League events in 1997. During a break in Wednesday's Outlaws program, Clyne showed reporters a master calendar that had a spring IRL race penciled in and scratched out in three different places.

The problem with the spring date, Clyne said, is spacing it far enough away from the IRL race in Phoenix (March 23) and CART's Long Beach Grand Prix (April 13).

Clyne met with Phoenix promoter Buddy Jobe and IRL executive director Jack Long on Wednesday in attempt to hammer out the details. More meetings are scheduled this weekend.

If Las Vegas gets two IRL races, Clyne indicated one almost certainly would be held at night. Encouraged by last Saturday's series record Winston West turnout of 27,435 (and track officials apparently under-reported the actual crowd, said to be closer to 42,000), the Speedway wants to book as many evening events as possible.

Up the ante

It seems the slower and purported cheaper cars that will be adopted by the Indy Racing League next year may not be as thrifty as projected.

"I think it will be more expensive than people think," said IRL headliner Arie Luyendyk, a spectator at last weekend's NASCAR Craftsman Truck race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. "You're going to have to buy two new cars, gearboxes and wings (as compared to last year, when the IRL campaigned used CART machines).

"The only good thing is that the IRL rules will be the same in 1998, so you don't have to buy new cars every year. That's where the savings come."

But until then, the buy-a-ride philosophy that IRL founder Tony George was trying to avoid in forming the new series may be as profound as ever.

"I have a few offers for next year," super modified specialist Joe Gosek told the New York Times, "but all the car owners want me to bring $1 million in sponsorship. It wasn't so bad last year, because they already had the equipment."

Luyendyk also has reservations that the new, bulky gearboxes will make the cars more difficult to drive. And they may be impossible to regulate, unless the IRL puts together a rule book soon.

"We don't know yet what we can change and it's going to be a learning year for everybody," Luyendyk's engineer Tim Wardrop told the Indianapolis Star. "But as it stands now, you may need 10 guys to police each car."

Backmarkers

Tony Bettenhausen Motorsports has selected 25-year-old Canadian Patrick Carpentier from among four finalists to drive its CART Indy car next season. ... Having signed 23-year-old Jan Magnussen of Denmark and 24-year-old Rubens Barrichello of Brazil to drive, Jackie Stewart's new team will be the youngest in Formula One next year. ... NASCAR Crafstman Truck Series champion Ron Hornaday Jr. finished 23 of 24 races in the top 10 and even more remarkable, completed all but two of 4,536 possible laps this season. ... Local oddsmakers looked brilliant when 3-1 choice Jack Sprague won Sunday's truck race finale at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, but most of the gambling houses failed to adjust their lines after Friday's qualifying. That meant Bill Elliott, who finished second, was available to bettors at 50-1 at Boulder Station and second-row starter Bob Kesolowski went off at a lofty 75-1. ... Rich Bickle will replace Bill Sedgwick as driver of Darrell Waltrip's Sears DieHard Chevrolet Craftsman Truck next year. ... Las Vegas weekend warrior and drag racing engine builder Rick Dahl set a national NHRA Class SS/J 1/8th-mile speed record last weekend with an adjusted run of 6.65 sec.@101.30 mph at LA County Raceway. ... Joe Gibbs has released Lee Beard as team manager of his NHRA Top Fuel and Funny Car teams. ... Longtime Indy 500 car sponsor Bryant Heating and Cooling Systems will jump from Arie Luyendyk's to Mike Groff's car for 1997. ... The SCORE off-road season concludes this weekend with the annual running of the Baja 1000 in Mexico.