NASCAR's Las Vegas Gladiators

The actual Las Vegas Gladiators - the Arena Football League team - had their bye week the weekend of NASCAR's annual trip to Bruston Smith's Nevada speed palace, and NASCAR did a decent job of showing off its own gladiators in their stead.

It also showed off a championship showdown that looks to already be taking solid form. That NASCAR's Winston/Nextel Cup title fight after three races of 2006 is between Hendrick Motorsports and Roush Racing isn't exactly a shock. It isn't that often that a title chase establishes itself this early in the season, but right now Jimmie Johnson has become the all-too-clear leader of the chase. And beating the Roush squad on one of their best tracks can only burn Jack even more.

Jimmie Johnson's two wins so far have come with a substitute crew chief, which raises some questions about a long-held belief about driver-crew chief chemistry. Without longtime chief wrench Chad Knaus, Johnson hasn't missed a beat. So just how important is such chemistry between driver and crew chief? If one cites the DEI crew swap of 2005 as evidence of the importance of driver-crew chief chemistry, one is making a flawed argument. Dale Earnhardt Junior won six races in 2004 despite what is now known to be constant friction with his crew chief, which was part of the reason for the swap. The change didn't work not because the chemistry wasn't there, but because DEI had lost the performance edge it had found in the first half of the decade, a performance edge based on engineering more than driver-crew chief chemistry.

Then there is Ryan Newman and Matt Borland, whose chemistry is superb, yet they and their Penske #12 Dodge continues to fall further behind, due to a Dodge program that has spiraled out of control almost since it started in 2001, and because of the inability or outright refusal of Newman and company to adapt to the low downforce-soft tire package mandated after 2003.

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The exciting finish of the Vegas 400 made it easy to forget what had been an otherwise unremarkable race. NASCAR isn't making it better with its publication of bizarre statistics such as "quality passes" and "average running position" as if they meant something. Indeed, some in NASCAR may be hoping such stats help make a race look more exciting than it in fact is.

Vegas will bank up its turns to 21 degrees for 2007, inspired by Homestead's increased banking and amid calls for higher and progressive banking for Fontana, calls no doubt heard by California Speedway's Gillian Zucker during a visit to Vegas for the race. Lost amid this rush is that Homestead has seen some good racing with progressive banking but hardly as much as at Daytona, whose banking is uniform, and ignored entirely is the effect progressive banking will have on a track in future years as the surface wears and ages. It is quite easy to imagine a scenario where the only usable groove is up high, leading to a Darlington-type scenario.

The exciting Vegas finish also came amid some concern that expectations for the races are unrealistic. While there is certainly a level of validity in saying that too many people may expect too much from a race, it remains true that Daytona-style warfare for the win is supposed to be the common template for the racing throughout NASCAR. Simply put, there is nothing in the layouts of Fontana, Vegas, Pocono, Michigan, New Hampshire, Chicagoland, etc. that is precluding racing as competitive as seen at Daytona.

Bruton Smith's campaign for a second Las Vegas date will no doubt be accelerated by the exciting finish, meaning the old question about the schedule and whether it can afford not to expand again will be raised.