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.

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.

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.

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.

That’s the beauty of the unpredictable nature of racing, and it probably means trying to gamble on NASCAR in Vegas this weekend isn’t a very good idea.

Of course, that won’t stop people from doing it, which is how those shiny casinos got built. But if you’re not heading out to the track, you can still follow all the action on this live blog throughout the weekend.