Tue Feb 26 14:02:11 2008

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This Week in Auto Racing February 29 - March 2

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Philadelphia, PA (Sports Network) - A Dodge and a Ford have won the first two Sprint Cup races, while Toyota has dominated the Nationwide and Craftsman Truck Series. It seems as there is something for everyone as the NASCAR caravan arrives in Las Vegas.

NASCAR

Sprint Cup

UAW-Dodge 400 - Las Vegas Motor Speedway - Las Vegas, NV

After the long, long, long, long, long rain delays in Fontana, CA, the Sprint Cup Series travels into the Nevada desert where they hope not to encounter anymore precipitation.

Looking at the Top-10, it's interesting to note the balance between the manufacturers. Dodge and Chevrolet have placed three cars each while Toyota and Ford have two cars. After last year's 18-win domination by Hendrick Motorsports and a total of 26 wins from Chevrolet, its nice to see everyone have a legitimate shot again. NASCAR officials couldn't ask for better parity.

While the Daytona 500 is the "Super Bowl" for Sprint Cup drivers and teams, the Auto Club 500 was probably a better indication of what the year has in store for NASCAR fans.

At Daytona, it is about handling and being in the right place at the right time, hopefully with a teammate behind you ready to help you to the victory. That's what happened to Ryan Newman. He wasn't the fastest car (that belonged to Tony Stewart and Kyle Busch), but he was sitting second behind Stewart with one lap to go and Penske Racing teammate Kurt Busch on his rear bumper. When Stewart went down to the bottom of the track to pick up teammate Kyle Busch for help he opened the top lane for the Penske drivers and they took full advantage.

In this weekend's race, they left the restrictor-plate behind and horsepower along with handling provided your winning car. In the final 15 laps, Edwards passed Johnson on both the bottom and the top of the track, showing all the power and maneuverability needed to get around the two-time series champion.

In fact, four of five Roush-Fenway Racing Fords finished in the top-15. Matt Kenseth, with his usual solid performance, finished fifth, David Ragan finished 14th and Greg Biffle, who looked very good in the cool Sunday evening air, still finished 15th under the hot Monday sun.

With or without a restrictor-plate, both Kyle Busch and Stewart seem to be championship contenders. There seems to be no weakness in the combination of Joe Gibbs Racing and Toyota, except for the three explosive personalities behind the wheel. If Stewart, Busch and Denny Hamlin can all get along, they will compete for the title.

But the championship still goes through Hendrick Motorsports.

Last year's 18-win season may be a memory, but with Johnson, four-time series champion Jeff Gordon and Dale Earnhardt Jr. driving, they will compete for the win every time out.

Johnson and Gordon rebounded from their Daytona 500 disappointments finishing second and third, respectively at the newly renamed Auto Club Speedway (formerly California Speedway). At LVMS Gordon has one win among five top- fives in 10 starts, while Johnson has three wins among four top-10s in just eight starts.

The race is scheduled for 4:30 p.m. on Sunday and barring any freak rain storms, we should know more about who is a contender and who is a pretender by Monday.

Nationwide

Sam's Town 300 - Las Vegas Motor Speedway - Las Vegas, NV

It's been the Tony Stewart and Kyle Busch show in the Nationwide Series. And the bad news for the competition is that these two part-time Nationwide drivers are on the entry list in Las Vegas.

Stewart owns back-to-back wins to start the season and lead Kyle Busch by 30 points. His win in California prevented Busch from making history. Busch leads the Craftsman Truck Series and the Sprint Cup Series and a win in the Stater Bros. 300 would have made him the first driver in NASCAR history to lead all three national series' at the same time.

But Busch came up short at Fontana. He passed more cars than Stewart, but that's because Stewart led nearly every lap. In all, the No.20 Toyota led 138 of 150 laps yielding the lead only during green-flag pit stops.

"The car was awesome," said Stewart after the race. "It was so fast all you had to do was run your pace and those guys would wear their tires out trying to stay with us."

"Tony was pretty much in a league of his own, for some reason," Busch said.

Behind the two Toyota teammates in the standings are defending series champion Carl Edwards, David Reutimann and 2006 Nationwide Series champion Kevin Harvick as "Cup" drivers have done their usual job of dominating the "developmental" series.

The only full-time Nationwide-only drivers in the top-12 are Mike Bliss (8th), Jason Leffler (9th), rookie Bryan Clauson (11th) and Mike Wallace (12th).