Columnist Ron Kantowski: Yellow flag should be red at the end

Tuesday, March 7, 2000 | 10:35 a.m.

Ron Kantowski's notes column appears Tuesday and Thursday. Reach him at 259-4088 or ron@vegas.com.

A few leftovers as we take our racing helmets off and put our basketball helmets on (the game as it is played today is so physical, you almost need a helmet) in preparation for the Mountain West Conference men's and women's tournaments:

* YELLOW ALERT: Short of slapping rain tires on the cars and diverting them onto the Las Vegas Motor Speedway infield road course, there's not much NASCAR can do to combat a wet track, as was illustrated at Sunday's CarsDirect.com 222 (actually, the race was scheduled for 400 miles before Mother Nature intervened).

But here's an idea that would eliminate the possibility of anticlimactic finishes under the yellow flag, such as transpired during Saturday's Sam's Town 300 at LVMS and the season-opening Daytona 500 two weeks ago:

When a yellow-flag situation arises during the last five laps, instead of letting the leader roll leisurely around the track to take the checkered flag, why not red-flag the race (stop it) when the cars come around to the start-finish line? Then after the track is cleared, restart the race from a standing start, like they do in Formula One. It would be incredibly exciting, a literal trophy dash to the finish.

You couldn't really use the pace lap/flying start method for starting and restarting a race because the extra circuit could possibly impact fuel strategy. The idea most times is to finish the race with as little in your tank as possible. That's the primary reason a couple of extra green-flag laps aren't simply tacked on to the end of the race when the track goes yellow in the closing stages.

I know, re-starting a race on cold tires is not ideal. But everybody's tires would be cold.

Even Earnhardt's.

* GOING GREEN: Those of you who read this column regularly are aware that one of my biggest complaints about Las Vegas Motor Speedway is the condition of the huge grassy expanse that separates the race track from the pit lane in the tri-oval. Usually, it's dead or dyed, and in either state, looks awful in person and worse on national TV.

But it would appear that before last weekend's CarsDirect.com 400, LVMS took some of the extra ticket revenue generated by re-configuring the grandstands and invested in some Turf Builder.

The tri-oval looked plush and magnificent in its natural green state and I wasn't the only one who noticed. A race fan in California called on Monday to say the same thing.

* DICKEL PICKLED: Bill Bayno is upset that his hard-nosed point guard Mark Dickel was left off of the all-Mountain West Conference first team Monday, but he really doesn't have much of a beef -- at least given the way the team is selected.

Utah's Alex Jensen and Hanno Mottola, New Mexico's Lamont Long, Wyoming's Josh Davis and the Rebels' Kaspars Kambala -- the five guys who were chosen ahead of Dickel -- are all better ball players than the gritty New Zealander.

But none is a point guard. That's where Bayno's gripe should lie. The MWC coaches simply choose the five best players, regardless of position. That's like picking an All-American football team without an offensive line.

That's wrong, and should be addressed -- provided, that is, you get caught up in all-conference teams and other individual accomplishments in what is supposed to be a team game.