Peter Koning in USA Peter is a long time hot rodder and supporter of Let's Go Cruisin. He's left his business, Hoppers Stoppers in the capable hands of his staff to travel the US for 12 months. Sure makes some interesting reading!

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NASCAR racing at Las Vegas

Last weekend was NHRA drags in Pomoma, and next week I have plans to drive back to Scottsdale (Phoenix AZ) for the another Goodguys run. Meanwhile I had this weekend free of hot rods and heard they were running Nascar's at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. As this is "sort of" on the way to Scottsdale I decided to leave the RV and trailer in Pomona and hopped in the Chevy and headed off to Nevada. Booked on line and got cheap room at Excalibur, on weekdays they can be as low as $40 per night. Cheaper to get a hotel than drive the RV.

Lots happening all around the track, every race team has huge merchandising vans, plus Dodge were taking people for drives around a skid track in new Challengers doing drift work all day long, they must have worn out 100 sets for tyres.
Out to the track Friday morning for the practice sessions, Saturday is the 300 mile "Sam's Town" race for "second tier" cars and Sunday is the biggy, the "Cobalt Tools 400".
Aussie expatriate Marcos Ambrose is now driving in the big league in a Ford Fusion for the Richard Petty team and we all saw him qualify on the front of the grid in second place, got just pipped for pole. After a few years over here this was great to see, and the Marcos Ambrose Tee Shirt I bought on Friday was proudly worn come Sunday .
Come race day and its really hard to see who is gunna win until the last few laps, they all run close to the last of their fuel and tires, for example in the 300 on Saturday the leader blew a tyre at the last corner and hit the wall, ended up limping to third. Up to then it looked like he had it won. The fastest guys are going over 205 MPH and average 188 MPH per lap so its certainly fast.
Anyway Marcos ran at the front group all day, and finished 4th, which is huge achievement, seeing around 40 cars start just getting in the top 10 is a credit. Apparently his best result yet. The winner was Carl Edwards.

As you can see from the photos I got great seats, (booked online, $140 for the three days) seven rows back and just a bit before the finish line, the people beside me said they waited years to get these top seats and I fluked them. Attendances are huge, how about 140,000 people on Sunday and 95% of them drive a car to the track. The speedway would be 10 miles down the freeway North from the Strip.
 Not so bad on Friday and Saturday going out but crawling back Saturday took 2 hours, out there Sunday morning up the freeway we came to a stop just out of town, took another 2 hours to get to the track. After the big race the cops try to divert everyone home by every back road they know because the freeway is gridlocked and it still took me 2 1/2 hours at maybe 5 miles per hour to get back to the Casinos. Only took me 3 1/2 hours from LA. They diverted many of us past the Nellis airforce base and took us through the base on roads usually restricted to citizens, so at least I got to see a few special planes, see the photos of the stealth bombers which will follow.

Anyway I'll spend another day here then drive south to Arizona on Tuesday.
Talk to you then.
Peter