Drivers hope for less risk in Las Vegas

LAS VEGAS -- When NASCAR’s top drivers left Las Vegas Motor Speedway a year ago, many were in an ornery mood.

The track had just undergone a face-lift that the drivers complained had made the 1.5-mile oval treacherous, and a spree of crashes prompted some to say they had spent the weekend in “Spin City.”

But as the Sprint Cup Series holds this year’s UAW-Dodge 400 today, the grumbling is all but gone, replaced with questions about how NASCAR’s new Car of Tomorrow will perform on the Las Vegas layout.

“This year we’ve got our hands full with the car and we’re a lot less focused on the race track,” said Jeff Gordon, who won here in 2001 and starts fourth today for Hendrick Motorsports.

The 267-lap race, the third of the Cup season, is scheduled to start at 1:30 p.m.

Kyle Busch of Joe Gibbs Racing is on the pole and Carl Edwards, the Roush Fenway Racing driver who won a week ago in California, starts next to him on the outside of the front row.

Gordon’s teammate Jimmie Johnson, the reigning Cup champion, is going for his fourth consecutive victory at Las Vegas and starts 33rd in the 43-car field.

Edwards teammate Matt Kenseth, who won here in 2003 and 2004, starts 13th.

The speedway’s upgrade included repaving the track and raising the corner banking to 20 degrees from 12. That sent speeds sharply higher and raised fears of tire blowouts that could cause serious wrecks.

So NASCAR and tire maker Goodyear brought a harder tire to Las Vegas. But the drivers said the tires were so stiff they couldn’t get enough grip to control their cars, especially on the new asphalt, and there were several crashes anyway.

“The tire was rock hard and it just didn’t suit the track,” Gordon said.

Now they’re driving the Car of Tomorrow, a vastly different car that was partly phased in last year -- but not at Las Vegas -- and is now the only car in the series.

In addition, they’re using newly designed Goodyear tires that are getting better reviews. The drivers also have more experience on the track, having spent two days testing here in January.

But make no mistake, they said, the track is still perilous, as evidenced by the six drivers -- including Kasey Kahne and Juan Pablo Montoya -- who hit the wall during practice Friday.

“This race-track configuration has picked the speed up a lot,” said Greg Biffle, another Roush Fenway driver. “ . . . We don’t want to complain as drivers that we’re going too fast because that makes us look like a wimp, but the problem with the speed is it makes it harder to race side-by-side and that’s what all you guys want to see.”

One driver who didn’t mind the changes is Ryan Newman, who won this year’s season-opening Daytona 500 for Penske Racing.

“I kind of liked the way the track was last year,” said Newman, driver of the No. 12 Dodge. But he said it’s a rule of thumb that most drivers don’t react well to new surroundings.

“We as drivers will complain any time there is a change -- when they change the tires, when they change the cars, when they change the track, when they repave the track -- we always complain,” Newman said.

He agreed that “it was tough last year for sure with the tire combination,” but this year “the tire, the car and the track are better.”

Last weekend’s rain delays at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, and the controversial way NASCAR handled things, was still being debated in the garage.

Some drivers complained that the Auto Club 500 began Sunday before the track was dry enough, contributing to two major wrecks in the first 25 laps.

Then, after rain interrupted the race after only 87 laps, NASCAR tried until nearly 11 p.m. to restart the 250-lap race, only to postpone it until Monday when the track couldn’t be dried enough.

Jeff Burton said trying to resume the race so late “didn’t make a lot of sense to me, but I know NASCAR had their reasons. If they told me to be there, I was going to be there.”

james.peltz@latimes.com