Vegas, Baby! Recapping the NASCAR Weekend In Sin City

Dale Earnhardt Jr. finished 16^th at Las Vegas, which wasn't exactly his idea of a good time.

But it wasn't all bad, either, as Earnhardt Jr. moved up to 15^th in points and is in decent position heading out of the West Coast swing.

So will it be baby steps for his team at this point?

"I hope not," Earnhardt Jr. answered quickly. "I don't want it to be, you know? We're not fuckin' stupid, you know? We made a lot of dumb shit happen last year. I think we're a better team, we're mentally prepared to run these races."

Earnhardt Jr. ran around or in the top 10 until about two-thirds through the race, when he was lapped by then-leader Jeff Gordon.

He took the wave-around to get back on the lead lap after a caution and gained a few positions, but couldn't make up much more ground.

"Once you get outside that top five, man, it's just so hard," he said. "The air is gone off the cars and you're just at the mercy of what's going on around you and there's no downforce. It just feels so much better running in the top five and I just couldn't keep it there."

His pit crew didn't help either. It lost a few positions for him on pit road – and the driver said he lost a few on the track as well.

Team owner Rick Hendrick said the team has "made a lot of improvements," but can't put together a complete race.

"It seems like every time the car's good, the pit crew screws up," Hendrick said. "If the pit crew's good, something breaks on the car. I think they've made a ton of improvement and will have a really good year."

Earnhardt Jr. echoed that sentiment, saying the chassis and engines were capable, but "we just gotta put all the components together."

He said after seeing teammates Gordon and Jimmie Johnson dominate the race, "the first thing you think about is studying their notes a little bit harder."

Earnhardt Jr.'s right front kept hitting the ground, he said, so he could have used more spring in that area – which is something Gordon's car had.

Asked if he wished the caution lights had malfunctioned again when he needed it to prevent from going a lap down, Earnhardt Jr. chuckled and said no.

"No, I like the green flags, even if we're going backwards," he said. "I like to get this shit over with and go home."

The Nationwide Series chat was a lot of fun yesterday, so let’s try it again for the Sprint Cup race.

Post your comments here and we’ll get a conversation going.

But please, no Kim Kardashian talk here. What a weirdo!

Danica Patrick ripped driver Michael McDowell after wrecking out of Saturday afternoon’s Nationwide Series race in Las Vegas.

On lap 83, McDowell had just brought his damaged car back out onto the track when Danica began closing on him at a high rate of speed.

McDowell said he tried to run the low line as a signal to Danica – in stock-car racing, he said, the faster car typically passes on the high side – but Danica dove inside as McDowell tried to come down the track.

The two cars collided, ending both of their days.

“I think the red [repair] tape on the left-rear bumper should have been a big signal for me,” Danica said. “It would have been nice to have a decent finish. … I’m not the type of person that crashes cars.”

McDowell agreed with Danica’s assessment of what happened, saying, “It was completely my fault.”

“It wasn’t the spotter’s fault, nobody’s fault – I’ll take blame for it,” he said. "I apologize. I hope Junior Nation and Danica Mania don’t attack me, because I am big fans [of theirs].

“For me, it was a tough day to go out there and blow a tire. The guys worked really hard to get the car fixed and in three-quarters of a lap, I ran over her pretty good.”

Prior to the wreck, Danica wasn’t running very well. She qualified 37th and had been hanging around 25th – though she said she was getting more and more comfortable.

At one point, leader Kevin Harvick lapped her and gestured – which she took as a signal to follow his line.

Danica said it was “so damn cool” of Harvick to attempt to help her out during the race. She didn’t take his gesture as the middle finger, she said.

The Nationwide Series race is getting close to starting here in Las Vegas. Let’s start a little chat room here.

If you post a response, I’ll try my best to answer your questions.

Pretty sure Kyle Busch is going to win today. And of course, there’s the John Wes Townley/Danica bet.

Discuss.

The final Sprint Cup practices have ended at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, with hometown boy Kyle Busch leading the first session and Clint Bowyer in front for Happy Hour.

Bowyer’s speed of 183.530 mph was the fastest in a rain-shortened second practice, ahead of Juan Pablo Montoya (183.318), Mark Martin, Jimmie Johnson and Marcos Ambrose.

Jeff Gordon, Kasey Kahne, Greg Biffle, Joey Logano and Tony Stewart rounded out the top 10.

In the first practice, Busch posted the fastest lap of the day (184.037 mph), ahead of Biffle, Kyle’s brother Kurt Busch, David Reutimann and Bowyer.

The Shelby American, a 400-mile race, is scheduled to begin shortly after noon local time (3 p.m. EST) on Sunday.

The Miller Lite driver has taken the Coors Light pole.

Kurt Busch won the pole for Sunday’s Sprint Cup race on Friday afternoon, achieving a bit of glory at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, his hometown track.

“To come out on top with a pole, I’m stoked,” Busch said. “It feels good right now.”

Busch’s pole win was his first since 2007, and his speed of 188.719 mph was one of 18 that broke the Las Vegas track record.

The increased speeds, drivers said, were due to a new Goodyear tire combination, better cars and a cool track.

Jeff Gordon will start on the outside pole, followed by two other Hendrick-powered drivers: Ryan Newman and Dale Earnhardt Jr.

Kyle Busch – who won the pole and the race last year with Steve Addington, who is now his brother’s crew chief – rounded out the top five, followed by Joey Logano, Greg Biffle, Mark Martin, Tony Stewart and Juan Pablo Montoya.

Two drivers failed to qualify for the race: Rookie Terry Cook and Casey Mears, the former Cup regular who has yet to make the field this season.

Kurt Busch said after his lap that it was his first pole with NASCAR’s newer model car, which he credited to Addington.

The crew chief, he said, may turn out to be the missing piece for his hopes of running up front more consistently.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. held the provisional pole until Sprint Cup qualifying was halfway through on Friday afternoon, thanks in part to an interesting strategy by crew chief Lance McGrew.

McGrew ordered the No. 88 team to focus solely on its qualifying setup during the first and only Cup practice today, which wouldn’t be unusual except that weather forecasters are calling for a complete washout of both Cup practices tomorrow.

That means McGrew would have to set up Earnhardt Jr.’s car for Sunday’s race based on the setups of the No. 88’s three teammates at Hendrick Motorsports rather than the feedback of the driver.

Why do that?

"You know, I don’t really know," Earnhardt Jr. said with a smile. "I don’t discuss that with Lance, it's really what he thinks we should do. It’s what he chose to do. I know it’s going to rain – or it could rain – so you’ll just have to ask him what his throught process was. Maybe you can get it out of him."

McGrew said there would be a simple solution if it rained: Just put in a setup somewhere between those of Jeff Gordon and Mark Martin, though he said Earnhardt Jr.’s style tilted toward Gordon’s a bit more.

"We’ve come a long way with our simulation programs and that kind of thing," McGrew said. "It’s pretty easy to predict where we need to be."

Earnhardt Jr. said last week’s disastrous qualifying effort at Fontana – in which he had brake problems – helped get the whole weekend off to a bad start. A better qualifying effort today may remedy that.

"We just qualified so poorly last week," he said. "Last week we were in race trim and we just tripped and struggled trying to get into qualifying trim before the end of practice and we got nothing done, nothing accomplished, and then we had the brake problems.

"It was just a cluster from the end of practice on, and we just wanted to avoid that."

McGrew said the team was still puzzled as to the axle problems Earnhardt Jr. experienced last week during the race. He said it was not believed to be an issue with the axle material, but rather that some axles were taking on too much heat.

But no one was quite sure why, he said.

So did he feel like the problem was fixed?

"Preliminarily, yes," McGrew said. "Is it 100 percent, do I feel really confident that we’re not gonna have any issues? No.

"It’s just going to take a little bit of time and some warm fuzzies before I feel really good about it."

Despite everything, Earnhardt Jr. said he still feels like the 88 team is in store for a good season.

"I feel like last week, we really didn’t get to show how much we’ve changed as a team," Earnhardt Jr. said, "but I think over the next several weeks we should be able to do that."

Juan Pablo Montoya, ever so fond of tweeting about “freaking” this and “freaking” that, laid down a freaking fast lap at Las Vegas Motor Speedway on Friday afternoon, leading the first Sprint Cup practice.

Montoya’s lap of 186.168 mph beat Sam Hornish Jr.’s best lap of 186.085, and the Hendrick Motorsports cars of Jimmie Johnson, Mark Martin and Jeff Gordon rounded out the top five.

Ryan Newman, Joey Logano, Kyle Busch, Dale Earnhardt Jr., and Brad Keselowski rounded out the top 10.

Earnhardt Jr. led most of the practice, but some cars laid down fast qualifying practice laps toward the end to bump him down the charts.

Sprint Cup qualifying begins at 3:40 p.m. local time (6:40 p.m. EST).

Drew Blickensderfer has resurfaced as Carl Edwards’ crew chief in the Nationwide Series.

But in his first public comments since being replaced as Matt Kenseth’s Sprint Cup Series crew chief just one race into the season (and less than a year after he won his first two races), Blickensderfer said he was “disappointed” but not completely surprised at the change.

“If you’re in that situation and you’re completely surprised, you probably aren’t aware of all that’s going on around you,” he said, "so I wasn’t completely surprised by it.

“As a winner, you want to be at the top level performing, but I was probably disappointed about our performance on the race track more than getting switched out.”

Blickensderfer said he “definitely” didn’t see it coming over the offseason but reiterated he wasn’t completely blindsided by the decision.

He blamed chemistry for the breakup, saying that the team didn’t fit together the right way. That jived with Kenseth’s comments made at California.

“The dynamic of the pit crew…and myself and Matt and how that dynamic all fit was more of the issue than it was how I called the race or how I decided to set the grille tape for debris at California," he said.

Blickensderfer said team owner Jack Roush told him not to get too comfortable in the research and development role he was moved to, and sure enough, he got the call to crew chief for Edwards in the Nationwide Series a few days later.

The move reunited a successful combination from 2008, and Blickensderfer said he was excited for the opportunity.

“I’d probably rank this in the top five jobs in all three series of what I’d like to have and what I’d like to do,” he said, "so when the opportunity arose, I jumped to come back.”

Blickensderfer is already in his new role beginning at Las Vegas.