Pothole fiasco wouldn’t ensue at Las Vegas Motor Speedway

Don't be alarmed if you watched the Daytona 500 and plan to attend next week's NASCAR races at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

And racers shouldn't worry about enduring a pair of intermissions like they did Sunday when they get on the 1.5-mile oval at Las Vegas, where the racing surface was completely rebuilt three years ago. The black ribbon of speed at the 32-year-old Daytona International Speedway is more likely to crumble under unforeseen pressure and inclement weather.

We allude to today's dirtiest word in NASCAR and what will become the p-word this spring for anyone driving in Baltimore, Washington, D.C., and other snowbound locales if streets are ever cleared of snow and ice.

Potholes. Dastardly little sinkholes that only tire stores and suspension repair shops appreciate.

Southern Nevadans endure searing heat and droughts but rarely worry about potholes like folks do in colder climes.

And you won't need to worry much about an obstacle like that at LVMS.

But it could happen even on new pavement if a race car, after a crash, leaks gasoline onto petroleum-based asphalt. It can happen if a drive shaft comes loose and gouges the surface like a pole vault. It can happen if cars continually bottom out and rear ends or chassis pound the ground like jackhammers.

The issue should not be that a piece of the Daytona track came apart. That can happen when 3,400-pound, ground-grabbing race cars challenge a racing surface's durability.

The concern should not be that a pothole developed but that Daytona personnel were not prepared to repair it more quickly.

It's beyond me why they first used blacktop to fill the pothole during the first red-flag delay after lap 78 and thought it would last for the final 132 laps. That fix lasted only 36 laps before the hole re-emerged.

It would have made more sense to consult Digger, Fox's cartoon rodent, on how to fix the hole.

A final fix held after track workers went through race-team garages to collect as much quick hardening Bondo body-filler putty as they could find.

Be assured, it won't take more than 30 minutes to fix the Las Vegas track if it is damaged enough to cause either the Feb. 27 Sam's Town 300 or Feb. 28 Shelby American to be delayed.

Former LVMS maintenance director Bob Miller, a Las Vegas resident, consulted with Las Vegas Paving before his first Cup race in 1999 to determine how to prepare for such a situation. The speedway still uses his plan, keeping trackside service trucks set up with personnel and all the equipment needed to fix the surface or a guardwall problem.

The track repair team would use a polyurethane and aggregate product, which was developed to quickly repair bridges. The crew is at the ready with material and all the tools needed to mix and apply the quick-drying patch.

Why every track is not as prepared as LVMS is a bigger mystery than how Dale Earnhardt Jr. rallied from 22nd with a few laps left to finish second in the 500.

NASCAR and tracks are certain to learn from Sunday's embarrassment.

Like good Boy Scouts, our speedway is prepared.

Jeff Wolf's motor sports column is published Friday in the Las Vegas Review-Journal. He can be reached at jwolf@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0247. Visit Wolf's motor sports blog at lvrj.com/blogs/heavypedal/ throughout the week.