Photo Credit: Justin McFarland
REID SPENCER/NASCAR WIRE SERVICE —– A brief rain delayed the start of Sunday’s Kobalt 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
Wind played havoc with the proceedings all day long, preventing crews from using large pit signs to signal their drivers.
A dust storm obscured visibility late in the race.
Dust storm, wind storm—it was all the same to Dale Earnhardt Jr., who finished eighth.
“Yeah, I couldn’t tell the difference between the two,” Earnhardt said. “I think that affected all the cars and made the cars much harder to drive. We had a huge wind blowing across the race track up into the wall off of (Turn) 2, and that made it difficult getting down into the bottom of Turn 3. It was a challenge. And you could definitely tell when the gusts were picking up…
“Visibility, maybe, is the only thing you get a little nervous about when the sandstorm came through, but the winds weren’t too windy (to make driving perilous). I thought it was before we got in the car, but I was just as intrigued as anybody to see how it would go and how the race would go with these kinds of winds. It’s definitely a factor that makes it another challenge. All the drivers want is more challenges; more hoops to jump through.”
And on Sunday, they got more than their share.
