Columnist Ron Kantowski: Blame lame crowd on start time

Monday, Nov. 9, 1998 | 10:52 a.m.

Ron Kantowski's is the Sun sports editor. Reach him at ron @ lasvegassun.com or 259-4088.

This is the last time this space will be devoted to lamenting another lame NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series crowd at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

That's only because Sunday was the last time the racing pickups will be featured as a stand-alone event at cavernous 107,000-seat LVMS.

Starting next September, the Craftsman Trucks will serve as a support event for the Indy Racing League. In actuality, LVMS management is hopeful the trucks and IRL will prop each other up, because the lesser of the two Indy-car series likewise has been plagued by scrawny turnouts.

Part of the reason for that is that LVMS is running at least a couple of lap downs to the competition in marketing its product. For instance, whose bright idea was it to start Sunday's race at 3 p.m., about an hour before the sun goes down? Provided it comes out in the first place.

It never did Sunday. It was a gray and chilly day with an icy wind whipping over the tops of the deserted grandstands, which featured no more than 20,000 inhabitants. Were it not for the gigantic Sam's Town logo emblazoned on the infield alfalfa (or whatever you call that yellow-brown vegetation formerly known as grass), the frontstretch would have looked like a North Dakota prairie.

What LVMS should have done was hook up Ron Barfield's Ortho Lawn and Garden Chevrolet to a spreader and have him ride around the place.

But in deference to the LVMS staff, Sunday's small crowd was more a reflection of what was happening on the track, not off it.

Frankly, interest in the Craftsman Truck Series seems to have leveled off since NASCAR introduced it four years ago.

The best thing about the NCTS is that it provides driving opportunities for guys such as Ron Hornaday and Jack Sprague, who dueled to the finish Sunday in deciding this year's championship. Were it not for the trucks, the only way to recognize Hornaday and Sprague would be their bruised knuckles, the by-product of knocking on Winston Cup's door for so many years.

The second-best thing about the NCTS is the quality of the racing, which is as tight as Tom Jones' slacks.

But the trucks still are trying to carve out a niche. At some tracks, like the cozy bullrings at Tucson and Bakersfield, where the trucks pack them in, it only requires a pocket knife. But at the superspeedways, where fans are attracted to marquee names, the trucks have needed a fire axe to break down the box office.

There are indications the NCTS may be destined to become a full-fledged support series, along the lines of Busch Grand National or Indy Lights. Next year's 25-race schedule is consistent with that theme, with stand-alone events comprising only about half the slate. The trucks will race a record eight times on the undercard of Indy-car races -- four with CART and four with the IRL.

It's hard to envision what the truck series will become but one thing is certain -- it's not going away. You can credit the trucks themselves for that.

Pickup trucks are America's best selling vehicles, and it's a fact that race cars -- and race trucks -- sell passenger cars and trucks.

Rest assured that if every driveway had a Roman chariot parked in it instead of a Chevy, it would be the Beach Boys -- and not NASCAR -- who would look like geniuses.

Then the Indy 500 would look like a Roman chariot race now.