Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

It’s safety first at speedway

A couple of close calls, a record number of cautions, but no one’s hurt

nascar

Steve Marcus

Kurt Busch, left, walks away after losing control and hitting the wall during Sunday’s NASCAR UAW-Dodge 400 auto race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Jeff Gordon also was involved in a crash.

UAW-Dodge 400 Recap

Carl Edwards made his second trip to Victory Lane in six days when he held off Dale Earnhardt Jr. on a late restart to win the caution-plagued UAW-Dodge 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway on Sunday.

A day at the races

Porsha Revesz, center, and other showgirls help introduce the drivers before the NASCAR UAW-Dodge 400 auto race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway on Sunday, March 2, 2008. Launch slideshow »

Owner Bruton Smith spent about $10 million increasing the banking in the corners and repaving his 1.5-mile Las Vegas Motor Speedway. His money would have been better spent adding even more padding to the inside retaining walls. Just ask Jeff Gordon.

Carl Edwards held off Dale Earnhardt Jr. to win Sunday’s UAW-Dodge 400 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race, but the 11th edition of the Las Vegas race looked awfully similar to the first nine, with cars running single-file through much of the race and few (five) passes on the track for the lead.

The only thing the track reconfiguration appears to have accomplished is ensuring that more cars wind up on the back of a wrecker and more drivers visit the infield care center.

Edwards, however, wasn’t complaining Sunday after earning his second consecutive Sprint Cup Series victory and taking over the series points lead. Edwards snapped Jimmie Johnson’s three-race winning streak at Las Vegas and gave team owner Jack Roush his sixth Cup victory here.

•••

It was a little past 9 Sunday morning when John Isner ducked into the infield press room. Literally ducked into the press room. At 6-foot-9, Isner had to be the second-tallest person at the track next to Brad Daugherty, the 7-footer from North Carolina who before he became a NASCAR analyst for ESPN was a five-time NBA all-star for the Cleveland Cavaliers.

Isner, believe it or not, is in town for the Tennis Channel Open, which starts today at the Darling Tennis Center. He’s a rookie on the ATP Tour. He has a 146-mph serve, which would have been fast enough to lap Jimmie Johnson four times Sunday.

Isner, who grew up in Greensboro, N.C., and played college tennis at Georgia, was the guest of the Wells Fargo Dodge race team and its driver, Kyle Petty. If you thought his height made him conspicuous, you should have seen the crew shirt he was wearing. It was flaming orange and flaming yellow and made Isner look like a walking forest fire.

“So who’s your favorite driver?”

“Oh, I like to pull for the guys from North Carolina.”

Thanks for narrowing it down, big guy.

•••

Las Vegas native Kyle Busch leads the field to the green flag.

•••

The roar from inside the track indicated the race was on. A different sort of roar outside the track indicated that somebody had just missed the start of the race because he was in the men’s room.

“I went to the restroom at this time on purpose,” said the man, who refused to identify himself (and who could blame him?). He had narrow eyes, was wearing a long, black leather overcoat and walked with a limp. He looked like an assassin, or The Fugitive. Maybe he was just heeding nature’s call. Maybe he was carrying microfilm. One couldn’t tell. But he looked like he might be with the Russians.

•••

Nine laps into the race, Jamie McMurray brings out the first of what would be a race-record 11 caution periods when he slides through the infield grass after getting tagged by Kasey Kahne coming out of Turn 4.

•••

There is a concession stand in the Neon Garage called The Lucky Dawg — it hasn’t yet been renamed The Beneficiary, or whatever NASCAR has taken to calling the guy running a lap down who gets to pass the field under the yellow flag. It was there a friendly looking woman was wrestling with a hot dog that was nearly as big as her forearm.

She turned it left and right. She cocked her head this way and that. That dog wouldn’t have passed NASCAR inspection, because when the woman bit into it, it exploded like a qualifying engine wound too tight.

Terri Dueck had come all the way from Oakbank, Manitoba, Canada, to challenge her digestive system like never before. She and her husband, Lauren, were watching their first NASCAR race on the recommendation of their friends, Greg and Tina Smith, who also were watching their first NASCAR race.

Two years ago the Smiths traveled to Atlanta, only to have the race rained out. They couldn’t stay over another day because there was a hockey game or a Rush concert or something back home to go to.

“We saw the last four laps in Toronto, in the airport bar,” Greg Smith said.

Who said NASCAR isn’t an international sport?

•••

Kyle Busch’s multicolored M&M’s Toyota may not be the best looking car on the track, but it sure is easy to pick out of a pack. The crowd comes to life and roars its approval as fan favorite Dale Earnhardt Jr. takes two tires during his pit stop and assumes the lead under caution on Lap 181.

•••

Turn Three. Row 49, Seat 77, The last seat in the house. Or the first, depending on your point of view. Gene Roice of Idaho Falls, Idaho, was rubbing his hands together to ward off the chill. Not that it was blustery up there, in the last seat in the house, but just before the race started, George Clooney’s swordfish boat from “The Perfect Storm” sailed over the grandstand before crashing to earth near the drag strip.

Roice was wearing glasses with dark amber lenses, the kind that Bono might wear on stage for a U2 concert. But Roice wasn’t wearing them to be cool, or to change the world. He was wearing them because he suffers from diabetes and has been legally blind since he was a teenager.

A former mechanic, Roice said he sees only blurs of color when the cars race by. Which, I told him, is more than some of the guys who had too much to drink in those infield RVs were going to see.

“These are great seats. You can see everything,” said Ty Demeulenaere, who was parked in Row 49, Seat 76, right next to his boyhood pal.

Roice nodded. His hands were still shaking. When the wind’s blowing like a sonofagun on a 55-degree day, you can feel everything, too. Right down to the bone.

•••

Carl Edwards takes the lead from Matt Kenseth on Lap 238.

•••

Every so often there would be a loud popping noise, which is the sound a right front Goodyear tires makes when it explodes. Then the yellow flag would come out and race fans would come charging out of the massive grandstands to top off their tanks at the Liquid Fuel booths.

This is where guys wearing purple Crown Royal racing jackets that say “Be a Champion. Drink Responsibly” on the back serve tall cans of Bud Light and Coors Light and Miller Genuine Draft to guys wearing Jack Daniel’s racing jackets that say “Pace Yourself. Drink Responsibly” on the front.

Asked how many cases of suds he expected to sell by the time the checkered flag fell, Anthony the beer guy said, “I dunno.”

Just then a guy wearing a Jim Beam racing jacket, who didn’t appear to be a champion or pacing himself or drinking responsibly, sauntered up to top off his tank.

“Probably all of ’em.”

•••

Gordon slides up the track in Turn 2 and hits Matt Kenseth’s car on Lap 263. Gordon spins and slams into a break in the inside retaining wall in the scariest crash of the afternoon. Gordon, like every other driver involved in an incident Sunday, is not hurt.

After an 18-minute red-flag delay to clean up the wreck, the race is restarted. Edwards pulls away from Dale Earnhardt Jr. and wins the UAW-Dodge 400 by half a second.

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