Columnist Brian Hilderbrand: Defending WoO champ back at LVMS Thursday

Wednesday, Feb. 27, 2002 | 10:23 a.m.

Brian Hilderbrand covers motor sports for the Las Vegas Sun. His motor sports notebook appears Friday. He can be reached at bh@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4089.

Danny Lasoski returns to the dirt track at Las Vegas Motor Speedway Thursday night in the same position he left it last November -- on top of the Pennzoil World of Outlaws points standings.

In his first season driving for Tony Stewart, Lasoski clinched his first WoO championship last year at the half-mile oval. Two races into the 66-race schedule, Lasoski holds a slim two-point lead over Steve Kinser going into the three-night Silver State Shootout at LVMS.

"We've got kind of a bulls-eye on us, I guess, but it doesn't matter; the experience and the thrill of winning the Pennzoil World of Outlaws championship last year, they can't take from us," Lasoski said of defending his WoO title. "There's really no pressure -- we're going to come out and give it 110 percent every night and hope for the best."

Lasoski, who opened the season last Friday with a win at Kings Speedway in Hanford, Calif., said the pressure of defending his title can't match the pressure of trying to win one in his first season with a new team. When Stewart announced at the end of the 2000 season that he was forming the team, he told the assembled media that he expected Lasoski to make a run for the championship.

"We all had goals to meet last year but to say we were going to win the championship was a big, big mark," Lasoski said. "We were just real consistent; we won only nine races but we were consistently in the top five and that's what win championships."

Now that he has accomplished that goal, Lasoski said his plan is to try to repeat.

"We would love to win a Knoxville Nationals again along with the Pennzoil World of Outlaws championship," he said. "If we had our goals to set, it's to try to duplicate the season we had last year."

One driver who will try to dethrone Lasoski as champion is Steve Kinser -- a 16-time WoO champion. Kinser lost the 2001 championship to Lasoski despite winning four times as many A-features.

"You never know what to expect out here," Kinser said when asked his expectations for 2002. "We just hope that every time we pull into the gate that we're one of the cars to outrun. That's what you work for all winter and sometimes it works out and sometime it doesn't."

Daryn Pittman, a product of the developmental World of Outlaws Gumout Series, comes to Las Vegas as the WoO's most recent winner, Pittman led all 30 laps last Saturday night at Perris (Calif.) Speedway and held off Kinser for his first WoO A-feature win.

Scheckter, the son of 1979 Formula One World Champion Jody Scheckter, will drive the No. 52 Red Bull entry after several impressive tests with the team this winter.

"There is no science to hiring a driver," Cheever said. "Whatever decision you make is a gamble. Tomas did very well in testing, but he is still an unknown.

"What we do know is that he is single-minded and determined to do everything necessary to be successful in racing. The fact that he is in the best physical condition of any driver we tested is proof of that. His focus is so intense he is truly the only driver in the history of the IRL with serious Formula One aspirations."

The IRL opens its 2002 season on Saturday at Homestead-Miami Speedway.