Friday, March 11, 2005 | 9:59 a.m.
Worn tires and a start that featured five caution flags in the first five laps just weren't enough to test the drivers in Thursday's World of Outlaws preliminary.
It was the wind that provided the true test Thursday, as gusts up to 30 mph blew straight out of the apex of turns 3 and 4 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway's dirt track, kicking up clouds of dust on an already slick track.
Yet it was a second-year driver, 20-year-old Kraig Kinser, who came away with the win in Thursday's A-main race.
"You couldn't even see," fifth-place finisher Paul McMahan said. "It was so dusty that when you got into the corner, if you weren't leading, you aren't seeing anything. It got progressively worse."
And that, said second-place finisher Shane Stewart, was the biggest challenge of Thursday's 25-lap preliminary race.
"It was just kind of, hang on," he said. "There were a couple of times I couldn't even see Kraig and he wasn't but two car-lengths in front of me."
Kinser, who won after starting second, didn't have to deal with the dust too much, only approaching a lap car once after taking the lead on lap 16.
"We were kicking up dust from the infield and it was just blowing right back in front of us," he said. "I caught one lapped car in there and I couldn't see where I was going. I don't know how the guys in the back were racing."
Kinser started the night's main race looking to hold second place, with polesitter Sammy Swindell running up to three seconds ahead of Kinser. But on lap 16, Swindell's car came up lame with mechanical problems, leaving Kinser in control of his own destiny.
Through it all, Kinser's dad, 19-time Outlaws series champion Steve Kinser, had raced from a 17th start to fourth by the time Kraig Kinser had taken the lead, and had made it all the way to second before the night's eighth caution negated his pass of Stewart and sent him back to third.
On the last lap of the race after the restart, Steve Kinser encountered troubles, with a collision with McMahan kicking off a series of problems that ended with Steve Kinser stalled at the end of the backstretch as the checkered flag flew.
It was a remarkable run considering the track conditions and the early-race cautions.
"One corner of the track was locked down with rubber, and one corner was slick as ice," Stewart said. "It was rough."
The cautions, meanwhile, were so numerous that the race had to be red-flagged for refueling on lap five. There were six cautions in the first seven laps, another three by the end fo the race.
"After that red flag I realized I should try to conserve a little bit or we're not going to make it to the end of this thing," Kraig Kinser said. "So I settled into second and something happened to Sammy and we just wound up with the lead. We couldn't get good traction, but everybody was fighting it."
Kraig Kinser, who won his second career World of Outlaws Sprint Car series race, earned a bypass of tonight's qualifying and heat races. Stewart, Donny Schatz and Jac Haudenschild also were locked into tonight's 30-lap feature race.
Craig Dollansky had the fastest time in qualifying, turning a 13.809 second half-mile lap at an average speed of 130.350 mph.
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