New Las Vegas Track Has That Lucky Feel

Mark Martin came here 21 years ago from Batesville, Ark., a stripling of 18, to race a late model stock car at Craig Road Speedway, long since demolished but only a dogleg from where the $200-million Las Vegas Motor Speedway stands today.

“This place is awesome, absolutely awesome,” said Martin, who will start seventh in his Ford Taurus in today’s Las Vegas 400, race No. 3 in the Winston Cup’s 32-race series. “I can’t imagine what a contrast from the way it was in 1977 and what’s here today.

“That track was absolutely flat, a level quarter-mile. At least, that’s the way I remember it. I think I finished about seventh.

“I never cared for casinos and the gambling and never came back to Las Vegas until I came out to race at this place. What a fantastic place. If I was going to build a race track, this is the way I would have done it.”

Today’s $3,550,000 race--267 laps around a 1.5-mile tri-oval--is the inaugural race for NASCAR’s finest at the track Richie Clyne built with his ex-father-in-law’s bankroll. The track, built with nary a slot machine, crap table or roulette wheel on the property, is about 17 miles northeast of the glittering Vegas Strip.

All 107,000 seats, including state-of-the-art club suites, were sold within hours when the race was announced last summer.

Las Vegas Motor Speedway will be the 164th track used for what is now Winston Cup racing since the late Bill France held the organization’s first event in 1949 on a three-quarter-mile dirt oval at Charlotte, N.C.

It’s easy to be expansive when you are starting on the pole with a record speed of 168.224 mph in a new Taurus, but pole-sitter Dale Jarrett minced no words when he said, “This could possibly be the best race that Winston Cup has ever seen.”

The consensus among drivers, those in Chevrolets and Pontiacs as well as the dominant Fords, is that racing could be three- and four-abreast through the sweeping corners that are only banked 12 degrees--minuscule compared to the 33 degree turns at Talladega Superspeedway.

“I keep saying this over and over and I hope people don’t get tired of hearing it, but in running the Busch race here last year and seeing how competitive that was and just knowing how competitive the Winston Cup series is, this is going to be a tremendous race.”

Defending Winston Cup champion Jeff Gordon, who will start fifth in the fastest Chevrolet, also said he expects close side-by-side racing, with a minimum of crashes.

“When drivers compliment a track, they’re not talking about the grandstands or the amenities for the spectators, they’re talking about the racing surface and how it will stand up,” Gordon said. “This track has a comfort level we rarely find. That’s because the surface has good grip and the transitions are smooth going into the corners, and coming off the corners. It’s the best I’ve seen in that regards.”

The width of the track, plus its comfort level, should produce long runs, maybe of 100 miles or more, between yellow caution flags. This will put a premium on pit stops.

“Pit stops are going to have to be phenomenal tomorrow,” Ernie Irvan said after qualifying 18th in a Pontiac. “They’re probably going to be as important as anywhere we’ve been. I’m definitely expecting long green flag runs because this track doesn’t play to too many wrecks.”

Gordon won the inaugural races at California Speedway last year and the Brickyard at Indianapolis Motor Speedway in 1994. If he wins today, he will be the first driver to win opening day races at three new facilities.

Although this is the inaugural race for Winston Cup cars at Clyne’s 1,500-acre racing complex, it is not the first for the gambling capital.

On Oct. 15, 1955, at Las Vegas Park Speedway, a one-mile dirt oval, Norm Nelson won a Grand National--forerunner of Winston Cup--race that was shortened by darkness from 200 laps to 111. The Thunderbird Hotel and Casino now occupies the site.

“Can you imagine what people would have said just a few years ago if you said then that we’d be racing in some kind of facility like this,” said Jarrett. “They would have laughed at you, but I know all the drivers and teams certainly appreciate Richie Clyne and his people and the job they have done in giving us this opportunity.

“To get paid to have as much fun as we’re having probably isn’t fair.”