By Brian Hilderbrand

Fri, Feb 29, 2008 (2 a.m.)

JOHN RAOUX / ASSOCIATED PRESS

Steve Marcus

A videographer photographs NASCAR car haulers, the 18-wheelers that transport the race cars and teams to each track as they parade northbound on Las Vegas Boulevard.

Steve Marcus

NASCAR car haulers, the 18-wheelers that transport the race cars and teams to each track, pass under the pedestrian overpass at Flamingo Road as they parade northbound on Las Vegas Boulevard Thursday, February 28, 2008. About 50 haulers, with police escort, paraded from the Welcome to Las Vegas sign to Sahara Avenue. The NASCAR Sprint Cup UAW-Dodge 400 is Sunday at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway and is expected to attract about 145,000 fans.

Like many people who work in the sport, but not with a driver or a team, Ricky May doesn’t have a favorite NASCAR driver. But when the green flag dropped to start the Daytona 500 two weeks ago, nobody was cheering harder for Dale Earnhardt Jr. than May, the vice president of marketing and sales at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

May, who has held his position since May 2001, is convinced that when Earnhardt is running well, it’s easier for the speedway to sell out its annual NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race.

“He’s the most popular driver in the sport and, like all sports, people come to see the star or their favorite,” May says. “It’s in any marketer’s best interest to have the star doing well, and I wish he would have won the Daytona 500, from a ticket sales point of view. That’s nothing against Ryan Newman, but Dale Earnhardt Jr. is the sport’s most popular driver. I don’t think it’s complicated.”

Earnhardt struggled through the 2007 season, his last with the race team his late father founded and his stepmother now runs. He did not win a race last year for the first time since he joined the Cup Series full time in 2000 and failed to make the final 10-race Chase for the Championship.

This year, his first with Hendrick Motorsports, already has given Earnhardt fans — and track promoters — reason for hope. He opened the season by winning the nonpoints Budweiser Shootout and then won one of the 150-mile qualifying races for the Daytona 500.

“When that happened our phones started to ring because I think there are people, when their guy gets going good, they want to be there in person to see it happen as opposed to continue to watch it on television,” May says.

“Dale Jr. doing well, I believe, motivates people to get off the couch and get off their wallet and come to the racetrack.”

May insists this is true despite the fact that the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority estimates that 78 percent of the estimated 156,000 who attended last year’s Cup race in Las Vegas came from outside Clark County. Although many people plan their trips up to a year in advance, May says there still are a lot of people from Clark County and Southern California who can wait until the last minute before they decide whether to go to the race.

Earnhardt, who enjoys rock-star status among NASCAR fans, sometimes is at a loss to completely explain his popularity. He has acknowledged that he gained a big part of his father’s fan base when Dale Sr. died in a crash on the final lap of the 2001 Daytona 500.

Dale Jr. has been voted the sport’s most popular driver for five consecutive years, his merchandise outsells that of any other driver — he owns between 25 percent and 30 percent of NASCAR’s $2 billion-a-year retail sales — and the mere mention of his name drives up TV ratings and Web site hits.

“There’s a whole lot of reasons why we got race fans,” Earnhardt says when asked to explain his popularity. “What I like about it is there’s a lot of ’em. I could see where I would enjoy that, you know. If I was a fan, I would have a lot of different guys I pulled for, but I would want to be in the mass of a guy that was just like me — a guy that I could relate to.

“It would be fun to go to the race and look around and have a lot of people with that in common. I think the reason they really enjoy it is because they look around and they see a lot of other people. They probably have a lot of fun being together and cheering as a group.”

May says further evidence of Earnhardt’s popularity can be found in a promotion the speedway ran before the Daytona 500. The first 8,888 fans (playing off Earnhardt’s car number, 88) who renewed their weekend ticket packages for the 2009 Las Vegas Cup race will have their money refunded if Earnhardt wins the 2008 Sprint Cup championship. The promotion, the brainchild of speedway General Manager Chris Powell, was to last five days; the 8,888 limit was reached in less than 24 hours.

“I’m not saying there was only one guy to use in that promotion, but he was clearly the best guy to use,” May says of Earnhardt. “To Chris’ credit, I don’t know of any race — not even the Daytona 500 — that has sold tickets to next year’s race before this year’s season even started.

“Dale Jr.’s big. He’s the Elvis of our sport, there’s no question about that.”