Driver opinions differ on LVMS after testing

LAS VEGAS -- Jeff Burton didn't mince words when asked to analyze the eight sheet metal debilitating wrecks that occurred in two days of Jackson Hewitt Preseason Thunder testing for the Nextel Cup Series at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

"We had a series of things," the driver of Richard Childress Racing's No. 31 Chevrolet said. "I think this tire has to be tough and not the best-driving tire when they're new so they can live. It's easy to cross the threshold.

"We saw some tire failures. Because of the speeds, the tires are flexing a little more and people have cut some tires on sway bars. So there are a variety of things, not just one thing that's caused the issues -- but it's an exceptionally fast racetrack, and when you're on the edge, at this speed there's just no room to get past the edge and think you're going to bring it back.

"So some of the things have been tire-related and some of them is, it's just so fast.

A little too fast, according to Burton.

"Two-hundred miles an hour going into a corner is not what makes good racing -- it just isn't. Atlanta has unbelievable racing but the speeds at Atlanta in qualifying and in racing are so, so different. You get a two-second falloff from the beginning of a run to the end of a run at a place like Atlanta.

"You may eventually get that here. I don't know, but we'll see. If you get that here, it will be a good thing, but if you don't, it will be an issue, and we're not seeing it yet."

Burton went so far as to give his take on the good, the bad and the ugly of the track's new configuration, which included the banking in the turns being raised from 12 to 20 degrees. The infield was also rebuilt to include new garages, including a new, fan friendly Nextel Cup garage when its construction is complete.

"The good is that I feel confident we're going to see multiple groove racing," Burton said. "And in addition to that, the new garage area is going to be fantastic for the fans.

"The bad is that the racetrack is too fast, and typically super-fast racetracks don't put on the best races."

Burton said Atlanta, while it has 190-plus mph qualifying laps, falls off dramatically in race pace.

"Here, the speeds just aren't falling off as much as we need 'em to," Burton said. "What they've done is build another super-fast mile-and-a-half racetrack, and on new racetracks [the racing] typically kind of sucks."

But just as quickly, a number of drivers stepped up to provide counterpoints, or support to his suppositions.

"I think this is a good move for the racetrack," said Jimmie Johnson, the two-time defending champion of the UAW/DaimlerChrysler 400. "It's going to put on better racing [because] the other track was a little bit of a single-file racetrack, so I think the changes they have made have been good."

LVMS made its changes last summer and Johnson said he liked it.

"It's been fun," Johnson said. "The track has a lot of grip and we're just trying to get used to this tire and the new facility. We have to transition to the track and what's going on with it."

Seven drivers had trouble with that. The fact was, five drivers wrecked cars on the test's first day, and for the ones that managed to improve to any degree, it took most of the rest of the test to get there. Three drivers wrecked on Tuesday, with stock car rookie A.J. Allmendinger wiping out his second Team Red Bull Toyota and creating an early "trip to the house."

Tony Raines, who was the first man to wreck, in the test's first half-hour on Monday, eventually raised his Hall of Fame Racing Chevrolet to 21st on the Tuesday afternoon speed chart. But other than Raines, Greg Biffle, who crashed a car Monday afternoon when a sway bar mount cut a tire, got back to 30th on Tuesday afternoon in the faster of the two Roush Racing Fords he had at the test, showed much improvement.

Series sophomore Reed Sorenson, who crashed one of his Ganassi Racing Dodges on Monday afternoon, was never better than 70th on any speed chart, among more than 90 cars that tested. Allmendinger's best showing was 66th on Monday afternoon. Kasey Kahne, who had the fastest speed Monday afternoon but crashed his favorite Evernham Motorsports Dodge in the closing moments of practice, came back to 31st on Tuesday afternoon.

David Reutimann was 32nd on the Tuesday p.m. session, when he also got the right rear corner of one of his Michael Waltrip Racing Toyotas into the wall.

Fellow rookie David Ragan came to grips with the track well, as he was in the top 20 in all three opening sessions, with a best of 16th Monday morning in his No. 6 Roush Racing Ford, but according to a teammate tried a new tire run with less than 15 minutes remaining Tuesday and crashed in Turn 2.

"The more you're on the edge, the easier it is to cross it," Burton said. "When you get on the edge at this type of racetrack, if you get one tire that was built a little bit different, then that one fails for some reason -- and I don't blame it on Goodyear, either [because] I think it's an awful lot to ask of a tire company to build tires that can withstand this abuse.

"I'm not a Goodyear engineer, either, but right now this is their toughest tire. I believe this is their newest design sidewall and their toughest rubber compound and there is no other choice but to run this [because] the speeds are so high -- and they're high for a long time.

"They can't bring a compound that's any tougher than this, and they can't bring a compound that's any easier, because if you did you'd have catastrophic failures. High-banked racetracks, using cars that weigh over 3,500 pounds with the drivers going 200 miles per hour puts a tremendous load on the tires.

"It's very difficult for Goodyear to try to answer that. That's just the reality of it. High-banked racetracks and new pavement are just a recipe for problems. So time will tell."

Burton said on Tuesday afternoon that his team had seen only one tire blister on its inside edge, but said his crew was "very conservative" on its camber settings, "which is all we know how to do, to save the tires."

Former Las Vegas winner Jeff Gordon said he also had a concern about tires, more than the 200 mph speeds heading into the corners.

"I'm more concerned with how hard the tire is," Gordon said. "Give a lot of credit to the guys that do the pavement these days. The grip is so good that Goodyear can't build a tire for us that really compliments the new pavement and new cars -- so they are put into a corner where they have to build rock-hard tires and the tires will last forever.

"I mean, I've run 20 laps or so, and the tires look like they just came off the truck from Goodyear -- they are just brand new. That's always a concern. We saw that at Charlotte [when it was re-paved] and it's going to take a few years, really, for them to gradually be able to back [the harder tires] off. That's the unfortunate side of new racetracks."

The newly-paved racetrack's bumpy surface raised eyebrows at its opening race, last September's Craftsman Truck Series event, but the racing allegedly was good. Burton furrowed his brow when referring to the bumpy surface but acknowledged, with a couple of his fellow competitors, that that might be one of the better attributes of the surface.

"The track is surprisingly rough for a brand new surface on a racetrack [and that] probably makes the track owners and everyone upset," Johnson said. "But from a competitive standpoint, it will be more of a challenge for the team. I think it's going to be a good problem to have and something that's going to help this track age and give it some character and really force the second and third lane to come in."

Burton didn't entirely share his opinion.

"The facility, for new pavement, is horrific in the ride of the racetrack," Burton said. "I can't answer [how it got that way, because] I didn't pave it. It's rough everywhere. There are no big bumps, but there's a lot of little ones.

"They'll have to fix it, eventually, because typically, racetracks only get rougher, and this track is really rough for a new racetrack. The best way to describe it is, it's really choppy. Even the straightaways are rough, which I don't understand.

"I can't anticipate a lot of side-by-side racing because the speeds are too high [but] I do anticipate multi-groove racing because I think the middle and the third groove are going to come in and be very good but I just don't see a lot of side-by-side racing -- but at what new racetrack do you see that?"

Johnson, though he said he liked the challenge, was even more graphic when he described it.

"There's waves or bumps, and I'm not sure how you describe it -- I think every driver has a different name for what they experience out there," Johnson said. "On the straightaways, they have some bumps going through the straightaway, and as you get into Turn 1 and you're on the brakes and trying to slow the car down and the force of the banking, the wave on the frontstretch turns into some severe bumps going into the corner.

"The car gets off the ground [so] it's been real tough to, one, get the front tires on the ground so that they can grip; and two, get the car to work directly through those bumps and be comfortable and carry speed. I think it's a good thing in a weird way because it allows [or] we'll start searching for a second lane and [that] allows teams to really work on the setup of the cars to make the performance of the car come around."

Jeff Gordon thinks the bumps on the track will make for better racing.

"I like the banking, I like the configuration and the transitions, but it is certainly rough, which kind of like Jimmie said, there can be good things and bad things from that," Gordon said. "It creates challenges for the team [but] if it was just perfectly smooth, you could really have kind of a one-groove, single-file racetrack going here -- and that's certainly not what any of us want.

"I think with the bumps, it's just going to make it more challenging for the teams, and hopefully make it a little bit of racing."

Kasey Kahne, who has two top-five finishes at LVMS, doesn't have a preference as to which track he liked better, old or new, but does think the rough spots will get worse before they get better.

"The transition getting from the straightaway to the corners is something that we've battled with a little bit," Kahne said, early in the test before he crashed. "It can make the back of the car pretty loose. It's rough in spots, so we have to get through the bumps.

"I imagine it's going to be, probably slowly keep getting rougher as time goes on. But it was nice. I liked the old Vegas; I like the new Vegas. It should make for a good race once everybody gets out there and gets in a groove and start moving around some.

"It's going to be a top, middle, low [groove, so] I think it will be everywhere -- so it should be good."

Gordon, after saying the bumps would create grooves, said he wasn't sure when the track would have multiple lanes for racing, but that he doubted there would be a "feeling out period" when the teams return in March.

"I don't think you'll see a lot of that, no," Gordon said of any tentative driving. "You know, once guys get through this two days of testing and we run [race] practice, there's still not a lot of an outside groove there. We are hoping after the Busch race and whatever other racing goes on here and the practices and stuff that maybe it works a little bit more of an outside grooving.

"So by [race day], we're able to be pretty comfortable, but I think you will see as the race goes on, that outside groove will just start to come in there more and more and lanes will start to form. You're always constantly learning about a racetrack and how to get around bumps and the transitions and figure out how to get more speed out of the car -- that's true for anyplace we go [so] I don't think you're going to see guys be extra careful or cautious just because it's a new racetrack, a new surface.

"I think guys will race just like they normally do."

Michael Waltrip simply said the track had multiple grooves already and, while it was fast, having different places to go was a good thing.

"I like it a lot," said Waltrip, who backed it up by turning in the ninth best lap in his team's Toyota Tuesday afternoon. "I think the thing I like most about it is the fact that, here we are at our first test, running on it for the first time and we are already able to run up high right off the bat.

"Every track that they built in the '90s, or 2000 -- whenever tracks like Chicago or this came online -- they had a bad rap for being not such good racing. This track is a whole lot like those tracks with the exception of the banking is such that right off the bat we are able to run in two or three different lines [and] that makes for good racing.

"It is really fast, obviously, but I don't know why people complain about that. We are racecar drivers [and] the cars just go fast. It is not the track's fault [and] it would be easier to slow down the cars than go to a racetrack that is not fun for the fans to watch."

Burton says he'll wait and see to make a judgment on that.

And two-time Cup champion Tony Stewart, who obviously has proven in his career he has no problem going fast -- and had his Gibbs Racing Chevy in the top five in both morning sessions, eighth and ninth Monday afternoon and 11th in Tuesday's late session, put the postscript on the test by questioning where the series had come to at LVMS.

"It's so hard to [compare it to anywhere else] because everybody is just right around the bottom," Stewart said Monday at lunch. "I'm not sure [but] it's just so fast around the bottom. We are running ridiculously fast speeds.

"It's stupid to be running this fast in a Cup car in my opinion. It doesn't make a lot of sense to me why we're running mid- to low-29-second laps in a 3,400-pound stock car around here."

Kahne said he liked the speed, but agreed with Burton's philosophy on the racing.

"We go fast at Texas, we go fast at Charlotte [and] Atlanta -- there's a lot of tracks we go fast at," Kahne said. "To me the speed is good -- and Tony is probably the same way, speed is good. But when you start thinking with racing, and you get to a certain point, the speed and what it does to the race -- if the track is not really wide and the speed is really fast, like it is at nighttime at a lot of racetracks, it's hard to pass and hard to get going.

"Once you get to a certain speed in these cars, it seems like it hurts the race a little bit. The track is fast [and] I think when the tracks are that fast, it makes it tough to pass another car. It definitely makes it tough to run side-by-side with the car close to you on the outside [because] it takes the air off your spoiler and makes it hard to drive.

"When we come back here and race in the middle of the day and it's 80, 85 degrees out, hopefully it should slow the track down and make it slippery, and from there it will be a pretty good race."