Columnist Ron Kantowski: IRL takes crash course in racing

Tuesday, Sept. 28, 1999 | 8:33 a.m.

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

Well, you've got to hand it to the Indy Racing League and Las Vegas Motor Speedway. There weren't any problems getting to and from the track for Sunday's Vegas.com 500.

There was no need to get an early start -- but only because most Las Vegans opted not to start at all. That was hardly a surprise. The IRL's reputation as a second-fiddle open-wheel racing series combined with Las Vegas' reputation as a second-fiddle live sports town probably doomed the event, at least from a bottom line standpoint, from the outset.

Still, there had to be a glimmer of hope among IRL and LVMS officials. Both did about all they could do, at least prior to the race, to make it a success. LVMS spent a decent chunk of last March's Winston Cup profit on advertising while the IRL has staged a series of mostly competitive and entertaining races this season.

But save for a semi-compelling finish, Sunday's race wasn't much of either.

Don't blame race winner Sam Schmidt for that. Schmidt moved to Green Valley about the same time IRL founder Tony George and his family business, the Indianapoils Motor Speedway, filed for divorce from the more established Championship Auto Racing Teams. CART had been providing the bulk of the cars at the Indy 500 since the late 1970s, when the CART car owners divorced the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, or at least forced the Brickyard into playing by its rules.

In racing, what goes around comes around.

Schmidt, who dyed his hair and Elvis-length sideburns black to help with the race promotion, came around to the checkered flag first. But man, did it ever take him a long time to get there. While Schmidt was clicking off lightning-fast laps to run down Kenny Brack's car two laps from the end, roughly half of the drivers in the 26-car field tested the walls for workmanship.

There were so many crashes, you would have thought they were selling Wal-Mart computers.

This race had more interruptions than your cable service during an electrical storm. Seventy of the 208 laps were run under caution. Only 13 of the 26 starters were running at the finish and only four finished on the lead lap. The pace car had to stop twice to rotate its tires, it was out on the track so often.

It was not the kind of race that the struggling IRL was hoping for, given its contract with LVMS expired when Schmidt sped under the twin checkered flags.

The IRL has just 11 races and may lose at least a couple of those. With Cleveland and CART having patched up their differences, the only new IRL venue is the new track being built in Kentucky.

Its Winston Cup cash cow safely in the pasture, LVMS, on the other hand, can take or leave the IRL.

But if I were LVMS, I'd take it and continue to pursue a CART date for 2001. For as much as this track cost to build, it should be used more than once per year, and the IRL guys usually put on a decent show, even if they came up short -- or wrecked -- Sunday.

It only proves that every race isn't like "Days of Thunder." Most aren't decided on a last-lap pass, just as every baseball game isn't settled by a home run in the bottom of the ninth.

If you canvassed the grandstands (figuratively), I'll still bet most fans enjoyed themselves Sunday.

And for a change, even the ones who didn't like it made it home in time for dinner.