Top Row Seat - Las Vegas
Dateline: 03/02/98Yawn....
Certainly the pre-race hype at Las Vegas Motor Speedway lived up to it's expectations. Unfortunately the race itself was a snoozer. The normally reserved Mark Martin had virtually guaranteed a win if his car held together. It's one thing to have a fast car, but to assure the media that you will win and then deliver makes for a pretty impressive afternoon's work.
Random Domination
Jack Rousch's five car "SuperTeam" thoroughly dominated the race finishing in first, second, fourth, sixth and tenth. Half of the top ten finishers drove for Rousch Racing. That has got to be a nice payday for the team owner.
The other big story of the finish was that Dale Earnhardt's eighth place finish made him the highest finishing Chevy and the only G.M. car in the top 14 finishing positions. This has prompted NASCAR to announce today (Monday) that the Ford Taurus is losing 1/4 inch off of the rear spoiler for Atlanta. (Source: StockCarFans Newsletter)
And finally, Penske South is well on it's way to dominating the points in the early part of the season. Rusty Wallace stretched his points lead over Earnhardt with a strong third place showing. His new teammate, Jeremy Mayfield, finished fifth and moved into third place in the championship chase just three points behind DE.
Another Sleeper?
Now the Winston Cup drivers head from a race track which has the potential to host a great race (witness the Busch race last Saturday) to a race track that used to host some great two and three wide racing. Unfortunately last summer the track owners decided to ruin a fantastic race track and "Charlottize" it by adding a tri-oval.
Hopefully, the race teams have found the secret to the "new" Atlanta and we will again see the exciting side-by-side racing that Atlanta used to be famous for.
Agree? Disagree? Want to throw hot spark plugs at me? I'm available in the chat room every Wednesday night at 8pm Eastern to answer questions and defend my opinion.
