Columnist Rusty Wallace: Looking forward to Vegas

Rusty Wallace

Monday, Feb. 23, 1998 | 9:08 a.m.

I AM PUMPED up and looking forward to coming to Las Vegas for this weekend's Winston Cup race. Not only is the Las Vegas Motor Speedway a brand-new venue -- and I like all the brand-new places we go -- but our race team is coming off two great finishes and we're leading in points.

Our Miller Lite Ford Taurus is running good and I'm really happy with our race team. This is the best start I've had, ever. I came out of the Daytona 500 fifth after running second and third all day long and we finished second Sunday at Rockingham, so that's pretty cool. I've got to keep that momentum going into Las Vegas.

I personally like Vegas a lot, I like the whole city. My wife, Patti, and I go out there quite a bit. We're not gamblers but I like all the bright lights. It's a real pretty city and it's an exciting town.

Las Vegas is so different from the other cities we race in that people said, 'Man, I don't know if a NASCAR race will work there,' but they put the tickets on sale and sold out right away. The other thing I like is that all the teams that are going there, they're putting us up in the greatest hotels, which is pretty neat.

Unlike some of the other Winston Cup teams, we didn't test at the track here during the winter. I just went out in a passenger car and drove around and looked at the facility when we were in town last summer to announce the race. It's hard to get a good feel for the track driving around in a passenger car but it was real smooth and real wide and it looked like it had a lot of grip to it.

The one thing I do like is that everybody tells me this track is so smooth. All the drivers I've talked to love it; the track is so perfect that nobody has anything bad to say about it. They like the way the cars handle and it's easy to pass on and that's what we look for in a good track.

Another reason I am so pumped up about going to Vegas is because it's new city for us. That's what NASCAR is doing now, we're going to new race tracks and doing new things and meeting new fans. It's also good for our sponsors because, let's face it, Las Vegas is a great place to entertain clients.

We've always loved going out to the West Coast to race. We're so used to running up and down the East Coast that every time we get to go out there, it's a breath of fresh air for me.

I did a lot of racing at Riverside and Ontario and I won the last two races they ever ran at Riverside, but I like the new tracks. We've had a lot of inaugural races now. I won at Loudon, New Hampshire, I've run good at Indianapolis -- all these new race tracks, I've run pretty good. I guess the one I've had the most bad luck at was the first race at Texas -- I crashed pretty bad there -- but that's a whole different deal. They've rebuilt that race track now and changed it a lot.

But Vegas, this track seems to be perfect and we just can't wait to get there and, hopefully, keep up what has been a great start to NASCAR's 50th anniversary season.