LVMS drag date may conflict with Long Beach Grand Prix

Monday, July 12, 1999 | 10:33 a.m.

Las Vegas Motor Speedway officials have not even formally announced its National Hot Rod Association date for next year, but already the track is facing heavy competition for fans in the Southern California market.

Sources have told the Sun that the Speedway will host a national NHRA event April 14-16, 2000 at its new drag strip north of the 1.5-mile superspeedway. Houston Raceway Park in Texas is expected to lose its spring NHRA date to accommodate Las Vegas on the 2000 schedule.

Apparently, neither LVMS nor NHRA officials bothered to check the schedules of other motor sports series before scheduling that date or they would have discovered that the hugely popular Long Beach Grand Prix is being held that same weekend next year.

The Long Beach Grand Prix, one of the biggest stops on the Championship Auto Racing Teams (CART) series, drew an event-record crowd of 102,000 to this year's race.

Although LVMS general manager Chris Powell acknowledged he was counting on a large turnout of fans from Southern California to fill the 30,000-seat drag strip for next year's NHRA event, he said he wasn't worried about going head-to-head with the Long Beach Grand Prix.

"I don't think that's going to be a major problem for us," Powell said, although he would not confirm the April 14-16 dates for the Las Vegas NHRA event.

Speedway officials have called a press conference for Tuesday, July 20, at which they will announce "another major motor sports event coming to Las Vegas."

"I think we still would (get a good draw from Southern California)," Powell said. "The way I look at it is there's going to be some overlap in those fans, but for the most part, people who are drag racing fans I don't think are necessarily CART fans and people who are CART fans aren't necessarily drag racing fans.

"What I'm saying is I don't think we'll hurt (Long Beach's attendance) too much -- if, indeed, the dates are the same."

Another area of concern about the overlapping dates is that national media exposure of the Las Vegas NHRA event would suffer by being run on the same weekend as the Long Beach Grand Prix, according to Jeff Motley, director of public relations for LVMS.

"If we were to race on the same weekend as the Long Beach race, we might not get the Los Angeles (media)," Motley said.

LVMS officials also will announce next week that construction will resume on the new drag strip, which was started by former track owners Ralph Englestad and Bill Bennett but abandoned when then-chairman Richie Clyne could not secure a national NHRA date.

Among the amenities to be constructed at the new drag strip will be a multi-level tower featuring control and media facilities and luxury suites.

Engineer Devin Horihan, who designed the new drag strip at Bristol Motor Speedway, will oversee the Las Vegas project, according to published reports.

Bristol Motor Speedway is owned by Speedway Motorsports Inc., which also owns LVMS and four other tracks.