Las Vegas Is the best Indicator of the Season to Come
By Jim Pedley
Racing people love to call the February race Auto Club Speedway the first true race of the Sprint Cup season. Me, I kind of like to affix that description to the winter race in Las Vegas.
The reason fans and teams and drivers choose to say that the Daytona 500 is not really the first race of the season, of course, is the bizarre nature of the 500.
The race is held on a track which is like only one other, Talladega, on the schedule. And truth be told, Daytona and Talladega are not really that much alike, for teams and drivers at least. Both are restrictor plate tracks but Daytona is much more technical as it requires better handling.
So, teams spend much of the off season and all of Speedweeks producing setups and cars that will be used, at best, three more times during the year.
From Daytona, it is on to Auto Club Speedway, and, “real racing”.
Yes, Auto Club is smaller than the superspeedways. It does not require the use of power-sapping restrictor plates. Data attained and transfered there will be able to be put to wider use by drivers and crews.
But at 2 miles around, flattish and very wide, it still is not your typical NASCAR oval. And at 500 miles, the race at Auto Club it is not your typical distance.
Then there is Las Vegas. It’s 1.5 miles around and has medium banking. Call it a cookie-cutter if you will, but for purpose of this argument, I call it a typical track.
At 400 miles, it is very typical.
It is the kind of track which will host, what, 11 more races during a season?
And for purposes of doping out such things as which teams have game this year, which crew chief changes will yield positive results, which drivers will make their way to the top of the standings and, most significantly, who will do well in the cookie-cutter-oriented Chase, Vegas can be an informative demonstration.
Of course, much of that goes out the window this year as Sunday’s race will be run with soon-to-be replaced rear wings, but I will still watch Vegas looking for hints.