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This weekend marks the beginning of NASCAR’s West Coast Swing which is viewed by many to be the early-season measuring stick for teams and drivers.
This trip out west is made up of three races that are held at Las Vegas, Phoenix and Fontana. Many drivers see this as the hardest part of the schedule besides The Chase, as most race shops are located on the east coast making it hard for teams to have access to a full arsenal of resources.
This is NASCAR’s only visit to ‘Sin City’ in 2016 with the main event being the Kobalt 400. The Truck Series is off this week after a crash-filled race at Atlanta taking out all the frontrunners and ending up with underfunded and un-sponsored John Hunter Nemechek taking the win.
Last year fans watched Kevin Harvick take two out of the three races winning at Phoenix which as of late seems to be his best track and Las Vegas where the Sprint Cup Series heads to this weekend.
Last year fans saw a dominating effort out of Harvick where he managed to lead 142 out of 267 laps and take home the checkered flag.
Joey Logano led early but fell to the rear after not one but two pit road speeding penalties.
In the past seven years Las Vegas has seen seven different winners featuring close finishes and even races lost due to running out of fuel on the last lap.
Someone else who always seems to show up and Las Vegas and most other intermediate tracks is Brad Keselowski, who has never finished outside of the top ten in all tracks measuring 1.5 miles last year.
Keselowski is the winner of the 2014 Kobalt 400 and placed seventh in last year’s running. He managed to win in 2014 by passing Dale Earnhardt Jr on the backstretch of the last lap as Jr had ran out of gas securing the win.
If Keselowski is on his game then he is always a favourite to see in Victory Lane so keep a close eye on him through-out this week’s practice sessions
Las Vegas Motor Speedway features the famed “Neon Garage” which gives fans the best opportunity in sports to get up close and personal with the teams and drivers.
It is also known by ‘NASCARs Disneyland’ giving fans the best access to the garage of all tracks on the NASCAR circuit.
After a exciting debut of the Low Downforce Package at Atlanta we get to see the second edition of it at a cookie-cutter track.
Las Vegas is a very fast 1.5 miler with average sized corners similar to last week at Atlanta.
Last week we witnessed very hard racing with cars sliding around the track making the drivers work harder then we’ve seen in recent memory.
The expectation would be to see the same this week at Las Vegas but anything can happen on any given weekend. Whoever gets the lucky roll of the dice this weekend will also get to spend the afternoon in Victory Lane.
My five to watch this week are Kevin Harvick, Martin Truex Jr, Brad Keselowski, Joey Logano and Dale Earnhardt Jr.
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