Columnist Ron Kantowski: NASCAR needed this one

Monday, March 5, 2001 | 10:23 a.m.

Ron Kantowski's column usually appears Thursday. Reach him at 259-4088 or ron@lasvegassun.com.

Nobody got hurt or wet and it appeared most of the 125,000 race fans made it out of the parking lots and back to their living rooms and hotel suites in plenty of time for Sunday night's return of "The Sopranos" on HBO.

Using that criteria, the annual NASCAR Winston Cup stop at Las Vegas Motor Speedway was an unmitigated success. The UAW-DaimlerChrysler 400 probably was the most competitive of the four Cup races that have been held at the sprawling tri-oval that is smoother than the peach fuzz on race winner Jeff Gordon's cheeks. There were 20 lead changes among 13 drivers and 15 cars were running on the lead lap at the end. Other than last year's rain-shortented event, when 19 cars slowly circled the track in search of Rain-X before the red flag was displayed, never has there been so many cars within shouting distance of the winner.

But they should have yanked down the side netting and yelled at Gordon to slow down a little. The margin of victory was 1.477 seconds, but this might have been one race that wasn't as close as the box score indicated. Gordon led the final 20 circuits and only Matt Kenseth's out-of-sequence pit strategy precluded the driver of the DuPont Chevrolet from pacing the final 43 laps in succession.

Second-place runner Dale Jarrett never got close enough to Gordon to attempt to "slingshot" past him, although that wouldn't have been the weapon of choice. Maybe one of those Stealth bombers sitting across the backstretch at Nellis Air Force base might have provided enough firepower to shoot down the three-time series champion. But this was one day NASCAR was glad to get out of town with limited drama. It has been less than two weeks since it buried its biggest star, and Dale Earnhardt still was on everybody's mind.

The F-15 flyover that preceded the command to start engines featured one of the pilots -- from the No. 3 slot, in honor of Earnhardt -- peeling off into the "missing man" formation. It was the first time the procedure had been done to honor a civilian, and it only served to tug at heartstrings that had been pulled pretty taut to begin with.

The tension was palpable as the field roared away at the start. There were three wrecks in the first 10 laps, with two-time defending race champion Jeff Burton being removed from contention in the first one and popular veteran Rusty Wallace and his teammate, Jeremy Mayfield, tangling in another.

As crashes go, they were harmless in appearance. But then so was Earnhardt's at Daytona.

After the disjointed start, the race settled into a series of long green-flag stretches separated by three additional sheet-metal benders. There was good, tight racing throughout the pack, but just not a whole lot of it up front. Without exception, every time there was a pass for the lead, the new point man pulled away to a handy advantage.

It wasn't exactly Michael Schumacher run-away-and-hide stuff, and the competition certainly was keen enough to keep fans from nodding off or leaving early. (Actually, only the former was a consideration, as nobody leaves a NASCAR race early.) But this one isn't destined to find its way into the archives at ESPN Classic.

If the race had been a football game, the final score would have been 17-7. In baseball, it would have been 4-1. But as long as nobody went on injured reserve or the disabled list, it was a result that NASCAR could live with.