Las Vegas to host Winston Cup race

Tuesday, Aug. 12, 1997 | 11:21 a.m.

Gentlemen, start your engines ... and plug in your cash registers.

Las Vegas Motor Speedway and NASCAR officials today called a midday news conference to confirm the speedway will receive a lucrative Winston Cup date in 1998.

The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority was to vote this morning to become principal backer of the race featuring the cream of the NASCAR's crop. In addition, the LVCVA will sponsor next year's Indy Racing League event at the 1.5-mile superspeedway flanking I-15 north of town.

The Las Vegas race, expected to be the only addition to Winston Cup's hectic 32-race schedule, is set for March 1. It will be a 400-mile race and will be preceded Saturday by a Busch Series race.

The Winston Cup race will follow the season-opening Daytona 500 by two weeks and essentially replaces the weather-plagued Richmond, Va., spring date on the NASCAR slate.

Richmond will keep both its races, with the spring race being pushed back to early summer.

This is the day most Las Vegas race fans have been waiting for since LVMS Chief Operating Officer Richie Clyne announced plans for the $200 million speed plant.

With LVMS officials guaranteeing a sellout of the track's 107,000 seats and projecting a local economic impact of $30 million, the race is destined to become the biggest event in Nevada sports history.

"We figure 100,000 people are coming in here (from out of town) that will be paid attendance," said LVMS Vice President Hugh McDonough. "Then you have the suite owners and their guests, the sponsors and their guests and hospitality.

"I could easily say that you could put a $30 million economic impact on it just for the one (Winston Cup) race. If you throw gaming on top of that, it (the economic impact on Las Vegas) will be astronomical."

Since opening its gates last September, LVMS has staged the three best-attended sporting events in state history. The crowd of 67,132 that turned out for the Indy Racing League inaugural last September tops the list.

But the wildly popular Winston Cup series generally attracts two and even three times as many fans to the big tracks that can accommodate them. The Brickyard 400 held at Indianapolis Motor Speedway earlier this month drew a crowd estimated at 300,000.

A spokesman for NASCAR (National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing) said the sanctioning body has received "thousands" of ticket inquiries since rumors of the Las Vegas race intensified during the past two weeks. One source placed the number of inquiries as high as 40,000.

Winston Cup is NASCAR's marquee series. It features full-bodied, purpose-built race cars, patterned after the Ford Thunderbird (Taurus next year), Chevy Monte Carlo and Pontiac Grand Prix, and drivers that have become household names on the American sports scene.

Four of them -- Bill Elliott, Dale Jarrett, Rusty Wallace and the legendary Richard Petty, now a Winston Cup car owner -- were expected to speak at today's announcement at the Fremont Street Experience, along with NASCAR President Bill France Jr.

Jarrett, a two-time Daytona 500 winner and champion of the 1996 Brickyard 400, has been eager to return to LVMS since getting his first taste of the D-shaped oval at a NASCAR Busch Series race last March.

"We're anxious to show everybody in Las Vegas who has been watching on TV what NASCAR racing is all about," said the driver of the Ford Quality Care Thunderbird.

While the Winston Cup race is expected to justify the expense of building LVMS, Jarrett said NASCAR also will benefit by coming to Las Vegas.

In addition to showing their big-buck sponsors a good time, the Winston Cup teams will increase their West Coast visibility and broaden their fan and sponsor base by competing in Las Vegas.

"I've felt we needed to be in that part of the country for a while now," said Jarrett, who joined his Winston Cup brethren in christening Roger Penske's fabulous new California Speedway in Fontana in June. "Now we have another tremendous facility at which to do it."