Jimmie Johnson burns rubber off his tires Sunday after winning the UAW-DaimlerChrysler 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Photo by Samantha Clemens.

On a Sunday when Jimmie Johnson found the finish line ahead of Jeff Gordon to become the first three-time winner of the NASCAR Nextel Cup Series race in Las Vegas, Nancy Vogan found herself thinking about another new phenomenon at Las Vegas Motor Speedway: men reporting wives lost at the track's lost and found department.

Not cell phones, wallets or keys. Wives.

"I never saw anything like it," said Vogan, the person in charge of the track's lost and found department. "When I talked to this one man and said, 'Oh, come on,' he said, 'No, really.' On five occasions men reported wives lost during Saturday's Busch Series race. The wives had just gone off sightseeing on their own. They all were found with no problem. I never want that repeated."

It wasn't repeated on an 80-degree sunny Sunday at the track, where officials estimated the crowd at 155,000. Vogan, however, had another first to report: A stock car racing fan who rode his bicycle to the track and chained it to a pole reported that one of his tires was missing.

"I didn't even know we had a racing fan who rode his bicycle to the track," she said.

The tire, reported to be a 26-incher for a racing bike, had not been found Sunday night.

Las Vegas police Capt. Tom Conlin said Sunday there had been no arrests of racing fans Saturday night or during the race. "It's been a real good crowd," he said.

Hometowners got a chance to see Las Vegas natives Kyle and Kurt Busch, who finished ninth and 26th respectively, fight early on for the lead.

The new configuration of the track, with higher banking in the corners, didn't seem to affect the success of Johnson, the reigning Nextel Series Cup champion who won his third Las Vegas Nextel Cup race in a row. Nine caution flags fell, one short of the race-record 10 cautions set two years ago.

Mayor Oscar Goodman received a rousing ovation before the race when he suggested to the thousands on hand that Las Vegas should have two NASCAR races.

The firsts experienced by the track's lost and found department came on the same weekend that the speedway unveiled a new pit road and new banking on the 1.5 mile tri-oval, as well as a new media center, salon and garage.

Brian Stetson of Las Vegas became the first man Sunday to buy a drink at a bar outside the Neon Garage.

It was 7:30 in the morning.

"I felt a bloody mary would be helpful," Stetson explained.

As the infield village, packed with hundreds of campers and RVs, began to awaken Sunday, at least 50 people in plastic sandals and towels stood in line near Red Neck Boulevard to clean up.

For $5 they got a five-minute shower in a trailer equipped with a dozen or so shower and dressing rooms.

Some of the residents began race day with bacon, others with beer.

"Would you all like some Tums?" asked Greg Fisher, 35, who was passing out free samples of the product to villagers from his Tums golf cart about 9 a.m.

With a Corona in one hand and a cigarette in the other, John Camp grabbed a few free samples.

The Neon Garage, which allows fans to get up close and personal as racing crews work on cars, drew raves

Linell Freitas, a school bus driver for 30 years in the San Francisco Bay Area, was ecstatic.

"This lets people know that drivers aren't the only important people in winning a race," she said. "We need something like this to show schoolteachers that school bus drivers are important in having a successful school system."

Before the race, entertainers took to the stage outside the Neon Garage.

The Frankie Moreno Band found itself in a strange atmosphere. "We're the only ones here who aren't impersonating someone," singer Frankie Moreno said of entertainers imitating Elvis, Madonna and Charlie Daniels.

Las Vegas resident Robin Leach, who hosted TV's "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous," introduced Strip headliner Blue Man Group, to the delight of the crowd.

Many fans have been coming to NASCAR in Las Vegas for years, including 12-year-old Heather Golden, who has come with her family since she was 5. She wore a strand of beads as large as Christmas tree bulbs and a tiara over her Dale Earnhardt Jr. baseball cap.

"His No. 1 fan," she said, pointing to her Dale Earnhardt Jr. sparkly T-shirt.

Radiology therapist Toni Stills appeared to be Criss Crawford's No. 1 fan Sunday.

Crawford won a Las Vegas radio promotion for a pedicure at the racetrack's new salon, which usually serves only drivers, their wives and VIPs.

"Criss didn't want a pedicure, so he let me have it," she said, sighing as her toes were worked on.

Allan Lindholm and his three friends came to the race from Stockholm, Sweden.

They wore matching soccer jerseys, and Lindholm sported a cloth Viking helmet.

"I'm happy; I'm sad," he said, turning his Viking horns up and then down.

He first saw NASCAR on TV in Sweden and said it was his dream to see and hear the speeding cars someday. Sunday was his second time at a race and first in Las Vegas. He said he loved the speed of the sport and the jovial fans.

"I woke up and put this (Viking hat) on and the whole bus clapped," he said. "If I do that in Sweden at eight o'clock in the morning, no one will laugh, I promise you that."

He bet $10 on Greg Biffle to win the race. "I think I'll go away like this," he said turning his Viking horns upside down to form a frown.

Though some drivers, such as Jeff Gordon, complained of driving with "white knuckles" because the track was faster thanks to recent renovations, fans approved of the changes.

"The racing is better, the result wasn't," Las Vegan Skip Childress said as he left the stands. He was unhappy that Johnson won again.

But he and many other habitual NASCAR fans gave the changes at the track high marks.

"This will be an exciting track, probably for years," said 51-year-old Robert Martinson of Seattle, who was logging his eighth year at the Speedway's Nextel NASCAR Cup race.

"It was snowing on us last year. This year," he said, pausing and looking at his burned skin and feeling his bald head, "it's too hot. And when you have no hair, it matters."

Jeff Stauff, a Vermont house painter, said he couldn't have been happier than to be soaking up the sunshine at the race. "At home it's been 20 degrees below zero with six feet of snow. Viva Las Vegas."