LOORRS: Las Vegas rounds five, six preview

The Lucas Oil Off Road Racing Series
This is Short Track - This is Las Vegas!

Corona, Calif. -- This is short track and this is the hottest and most brutally honest two days of close-up, frantic, high-speed, closed course racing that this town (that has seen a lot of action) has seen since all the way back to March 6!

The Lucas Oil Off Road Racing Series will be blasting its way back into the brand-new off road facility Las Vegas Motor Speedway on May 22-23 to contest the fifth and sixth rounds of its already smokin' hot 2010 championship season.

The Lucas-backed series kicked off its season in early March at LVMS playing to great crowds who were treated to two full afternoons of high energy short track action on the convoluted, one mile long circuit.

Jumps, whoops, dips, banked turns, berms, bumps, holes, high speed straights, switchbacks, sweepers, more jumps, and just about anything else (except for wild burros and cactus) that you'd find in an open desert race has all been compacted and laid out right in front of 10,000 great grandstand seats at the 'Vegas Speedway.

What makes short track racing so fan-friendly is that in Las Vegas every inch of the entire Lucas off road course is visible from every grandstand seat. "We designed and built the track that way from the first scoop of dirt," said Director of Competition, Tony Vanillo.

"This track was made to throw everything at every driver, every lap. We left them no place to relax, no place to cruise, every inch of this place claws at the racers," Vanillo went on. "It just never smoothes out, even for a few seconds. If you're really good, you can establish a rhythm, but I don't think any of our drivers will be sending the track crew a box of candy anytime soon -" Of course that's why there were packed grandstands at LVMS the last time the new Lucas show played there.

And the names, this sport has so many heroes that it needs four full pro classes just to give them all a place to race!

Las Vegas' own multi-time off road race champion Rob MacCachren leads the Pro 2 Unlimiteds into his "home track" with one win and four very close finishes in the first four races and a thin 8 point lead over multi-time moto/super-X champion Rick Johnson from El Cajon, 194 to 186.

We could use a bit of carbon paper here as the Pro 4 Unlimiteds have an identical points spread between the first two in points with Rick Huseman from Riverside (who won three of the first four races) at 194 and 2009 class champ Carl Renezeder from Montebello toting up the 186.

The Pro Lite Unlimiteds have an even closer point battle going with only 7 of them separating Chris Brandt, who commutes from Council Bluffs Iowa to race in the Lucas Off Road Series, from the pride of Temecula, Brian Deegan. For the record, the point are: 193 to 180.

And in the Pro Buggys Alpine's Doug Fortin has a "big" 9-point lead over Las Vegas local Larry Job 187 to 168.

Gates open at to the public at 9AM and there's a full day of racing each day on the specially-constructed 1.1-mile LVMS off-road course that compresses every bump, jump and rut (see paragraph 4 above please) into a sort of a "fist fight in a phone booth".

This is tight, tough, tense, short course racing. Welcome to 'Vegas!

Television will play a big role in the expanding universe of this exciting Lucas series with starting with 3 hours on CBS, more than 30 hours on-air with SPEED; 7 Hours on Versus; 20 hours on MAV TV.

Las Vegas Motor Speedway is located at 7000 Las Vegas Blvd. N., Las Vegas (702) 644-4444 www.lvms.com

Tickets are on line right now for this family-friendly motorsports weekend. Fans are directed to: www.lucasoiloffroad.com for more information.