Las Vegas Motor Speedway, Las Vegas

Las Vegas Motor Speedway, located at 7000 Las Vegas Boulevard North in Las Vegas, Nevada, is a 1,200 acre (4.9 km²) complex of four different tracks for automobile racing. The complex is owned by Speedway Motorsports, Inc., which is a company located in Charlotte, North Carolina.

The complex is home to several race teams. Currently, March, 2005, the track is open two nights a week for locals to drag race. This is an effort to get this activity off of local streets and into a safer environment.

The track is used by the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department as their driver training facility.

In 2006, plans were announced to reconfigure the track after the March 2006 NEXTEL Cup Series Race. This reconfiguration will entail "progressive banking" which increases in angeling the further up the track you are located. This is expected to increase side-by-side racing, and the construction of a new fan zone and pit road.

As of August 8, 2006 the newly reconfigured track reopened to stock cars and 2004 NEXTEL Cup Champion, Kurt Busch who drives the #2 Miller Lite Penske Dodge Charger, became the first NASCAR NEXTEL Cup driver to test a stock car on the newly reconfigured track.

Current Events

• Superspeedway, a 1.5 mile (2.4 km) oval hosts:
• NASCAR Nextel Cup - UAW-DaimlerChrysler 400
• NASCAR Busch Series - Sam's Town 300
• NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series - Smith's Las Vegas 350
• The quarter-mile (400 m) dirt oval hosts:
• World of Outlaws event
• other dirt-racing events
• The quarter-mile (400 m) drag strip hosts:
• Two NHRA events every year

The Indy Racing League ran at the track from 1996 and 2000. Champ Car held two races at the speedway in 2004 and 2005.

Records

The following track records were all set before the 2006 track reconfiguration, which increased the bank angles in the turns. Subsequent testing before the 2007 season showed significantly higher speeds, with NEXTEL Cup drivers recording unofficial laps at better than 185 mph. Consequently, there is a good possibility that some or all of these records may be broken in 2007.

• NASCAR Nextel Cup Qualifying: Kasey Kahne, 30.874 sec. (174.904 mph), 2004
• NASCAR Nextel Cup Race: Mark Martin, 2 hrs. 43 min. 58 sec. (146.554 mph), 1998
• NASCAR Busch Series Qualifying: Mike Bliss, 31.535 sec. (171.238 mph), 2004
• NASCAR Busch Series Race: Jeff Burton, 2 hrs. 13 min. 13 sec. (135.118 mph), 2000
• NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series Qualifying: Mike Skinner, 30.326 sec. (178.065 mph), 2006
• NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series Race: David Starr, 1 hr. 37 min. 3 sec. (135.394 mph), 2002