Columnist Brian Hilderbrand: Burton expects LVMS grooves to widen out

Friday, March 12, 1999 | 9:38 a.m.

Brian Hilderbrand's motor sports notebook appears Friday. His golf notebook appears Wednesday. Reach him at bh@lasvegassun.com or 259-4089.

Traffic may not have flowed smoothly outside of Las Vegas Motor Speedway last weekend, but Jeff Burton didn't have any complaints about the way it moved on the track during the NASCAR Winston Cup Las Vegas 400.

Burton, who followed his second-place finish at LVMS last year with a win Sunday, predicted that the 1.5-mile superspeedway will only get better with age.

"The thing is, this is a new race track and there's already two and three grooves," Burton said. "As it gets older, I think the groove will just get bigger.

"It wouldn't surprise me at all if two years from now, we're running up near the wall in the corners. Race tracks tend to do that, the groove tends to widen out."

While the inaugural Las Vegas 400 featured little of the side-by-side racing and passing in the corners that has made Winston Cup racing the most popular form of motor sports, the second edition of the 267-lap race was rife with it.

And Burton was in the middle of most of it.

Burton and Dale Earnhardt raced door handle-to-door handle for several laps midway through the race as the seven-time Winston Cup champion attempted to stay on the lead lap.

In the closing laps, Burton and his older brother, Ward, raced side-by-side for the lead for several laps before Jeff finally got past Ward and pulled away to his sixth career victory.

Some drivers stated that NASCAR's tinkering with the rules effecting the aerodynamics of the cars since last year's race in Las Vegas has led to closer, more competitive racing.

Jeff Burton, however, isn't entirely sold on that notion.

"When (NASCAR) made this rule change, I was totally against it," Burton said. "I guess they've proven me wrong. The competition has been better, the races have been better.

"But I think it's more about the race tracks being conducive to good racing. When you go to a race track where you can run side-by-side, like Vegas, you'll run side-by-side. When you go to a race track where you can't run side-by-side, you won't.

"I still wonder if the (rules effecting) spoilers and air dams are making better races, but I guess it doesn't matter as long as you're having better races. I'm still a little suspect in that but I guess the facts and figures don't lie."

* NASCAR: Busch Series regular Jeff Green, who finished eighth in last Saturday's Sam's Town 300 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, has mixed emotions about the proliferation of Winston Cup regulars driving in Busch Series races.

Last weekend, 16 Winston Cup drivers made the 43-car field for the Sam's Town 300, prompting criticism from Busch Series regular Randy LaJoie, among others.

"If I was one of the guys going home from Las Vegas, I'd probably have a little bit different look on it," Green, who qualified 10th, said. "Those guys (Winston Cup drivers) make us better. I feel like my team is as good as any of them, even the Winston Cup teams. If we can beat those guys, it makes us a better race team.

"It's a bonus, but it has a downfall to it to the people that have to go home. It's a shame to see anyone go home (but) when you get there and you have 65 or 70 cars trying to make a 43-car field, someone's going to have to go down the road."

Green said he saw some moves early in the race that had him driving on the edge of his seat.

"I started 10th in Vegas, and there were a couple of guys that started in front of me that probably shouldn't have been there," Green said. "I saw them pull a couple of moves in the first couple of laps that just took my breath away.

"Looking back over the past three or four years, that was probably Jeff Green a couple of years ago doing that stuff. Hopefully, I've learned the roles that I need to take at the first of the race and to be able to put my car in the best situation at the end."

* CART: Richie Hearn is resting comfortably in his Henderson home after sustaining a mild concussion during a test-session crash last Thursday at Homestead, Fla. Hearn was kept overnight at Homestead Hospital and released.

"I'm still pretty sore, but it's getting better," Hearn said. "It'll be good to get back into the car. We were consistently turning laps of 25.2 seconds (214.5 mph), which is the best we've done in preseason testing.

"It was certainly an encouraging test up until (making contact with the wall) and those times will put us in a good place to start the race weekend."

CART regulations prohibited Hearn from driving for one week following his accident. But Hearn said he would be in the cockpit of his Budweiser Swift/Toyota for next weekend's season opener at Homestead.

"The fact that Richie wasn't (seriously) injured is a credit to the Swift engineers," team owner John Della Penna said. ...

Las Vegas resident Paul Tracy spent last week's test at Homestead focusing on his setup for the season's second race, at Twin Ring Motegi in Japan.

Tracy has been excluded from the March 21 season opener at Homestead by CART chief steward Wally Dallenbach as a result of an on-track incident with Michael Andretti last year in Australia.

Tracy turned in a best lap of 25 seconds (216 mph) at Homestead despite using a different setup in his Team Kool Green Reynard/Honda than required for the 1.5-mile oval.

"It was a really great test -- speed-wise, car-wise and balance-wise," Tracy said. "It all came together. It was probably the best test I've had with Team Kool Green.

"The car is good; we've got something we can really work with now."

Tracy's teammate, Dario Franchitti, was clocked at 214 mph on his best lap.

* IRL: Providing further evidence why racers say they feel safer in a race car than they do in their passenger vehicles, Scott Sharp backed into the wall during a recent test session at Phoenix International Raceway and walked away unhurt.

The black box in his car recorded an impact of 100 Gs -- 100 times the force of gravity.

Sharp, who won last year's IRL race at PIR, said the one-mile oval can be tricky.

"To run a fast lap at Phoenix, you're running right on the edge and it's very tricky," he said. "You have to run that way because running it loose allows you to get every fraction of speed out of it."

The MCI WorldCom 200 at PIR will be held Sunday, March 28.

* BACKMARKERS: Late Models, Grand American Modifieds, Limited Late Models and Legends cars will highlight Saturday's NASCAR Winston Racing Series card at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway's 3/8ths-mile paved oval. Gates open at 3 p.m., with racing slated for 7.

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