Notebook: Winston West cars will try to defeat the weather tonight

Thursday, March 1, 2001 | 9:47 a.m.

The rain that has pounded Southern Nevada for the past few days has wreaked havoc with the schedule at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

Wednesday night's NAPA Auto Parts 300 NASCAR Winston West race at The Bullring was postponed to tonight at 7:30 after NASCAR officials deemed it would be impossible to get the 3/8-mile track dry in time for afternoon qualifying.

Tonight's opening round of the three-night Pennzoil World of Outlaws show at the LVMS half-mile dirt track was rescheduled for Sunday, following the Winston Cup race at the 1.5-mile superspeedway.

"The weather has caused an inconvenience but it's not going to keep us from having an exciting weekend of racing," LVMS general manager Chris Powell said. "We're hopeful that this amended schedule will work well for everyone."

Powell said moving tonight's World of Outlaws event to Sunday would give fans attending Sunday's UAW-DaimlerChrysler 400 NASCAR Winston Cup race an opportunity to skip the post-race traffic by taking in the winged sprint-car races.

Tickets for Thursday's World of Outlaws event will be honored on Sunday only, Powell said. Fans unable to attend Sunday's rescheduled event either can mail their unused tickets to LVMS within 30 days for a full refund or exchange them for the WoO event in November.

Jarrett will sign autographs from 5-6 p.m. and Busch will sign from 6:30-7:30 p.m.

The Chapel of Love is located at 1431 Las Vegas Blvd. South.

The station will broadcast tonight's Winston West race from The Bullring and will carry the Motor Racing Network's feed of the Sam's Town 300 Busch Series race on Saturday and the UAW-DaimlerChrysler 400 Winston Cup race on Sunday.

Each of the seven Boyd Gaming Group's casinos will offer a different chip so hardcore Petty fans will have to visit each property to get all seven chips.

The seven Boyd properties are: Sam's Town, Stardust, Main Street Station, California and Fremont hotel-casinos in Las Vegas and Joker's Wild and Eldorado hotel-casinos in Henderson.

At 30 races this season, including Sunday's UAW-DaimlerChrysler 400 at LVMS, The Most Colorful Fan Patrol will scour the stands for the flashiest NASCAR fans. Photos of 12 fans will be put on a web site and the winner will be determined by a vote of those visiting the site (www.colorfulfan.com).

One finalist will be chosen each month and those nine fans will win a trip to Las Vegas for next year's Winston Cup race to determine the contest winner.

"It's just a fake world but it's kind of neat because you need to bow out of the real world every now and then. It may be a fake world, but on the track or downtown, winning is still everything."