When Bruton Smith decided to completely remodel the 1.5-mile Las Vegas Motor Speedway two years ago he did it with a view to improving the somewhat insipid racing that had generally been the norm since NASCAR made its first trip to Sin City in 1998. By adding Homestead-style variable banking Bruton certainly achieved his aim but he also made his track a far more unforgiving proposition as evidenced in Sunday’s UAW-Dodge 400.
Without question Sunday’s third round of the 2008 Sprint Cup Championship saw enough side by side action to further prove that the arrival of Car of Tomorrow has not signalled the death knell for good racing and by the time the chequered flag fell for the #99 Roush-Fenway Ford of Carl Edwards at least half a dozen of the 43 starters were thankful of NASCAR’s decision to favour driver safety over looks with the new generation of vehicles.
On a bright but blustery day in Nevada a sell-out crowd of 155,000 people witnessed a record number of caution periods (11) for a Cup race in Las Vegas and one of the hardest impacts they will see in this or any other season as Jeff Gordon pounded the inside retaining wall on the back straight at well over 150mph. In a crash that saw the entire radiator stripped clean off Gordon’s #24 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet there was an audible sigh of relief when the four-times Cup Champion emerged unaided after a fairy sickening head-on impact.
Of course the crashes were just a backdrop to a second consecutive victory for the #99 Ford of Edwards, who started second and contended for the lead right from the word go. Edwards still had to fight back from a pit road penalty dished out when a tyre rolled free and crossed the pit lane during a lap 110 round of yellow flag stops for Tony Stewart’s bone-jarring turn four accident following a right front tyre failure and thanks to an over-enthusiastic member of the media it could have been a lot worse.
![Carl Edwards, Roush-Fenway Ford [Pic Credit Ford Media]](http://pix.crash.net/thumbs/405819.jpg)
