Vegas was always a cool place to go. It was one of 2 tracks on the circuit where the city seeminly could not care less that the cup race is in town. The other being Sonoma. It always felt like more of a vaction when you went to a place that did not live for the cup race like places like Talladega and Bristol. The one thing you have got to hate about the Vegas race is all the stupid gambling cliches that the idiot announcers are going to jam down your throat in about 4 hours.

The California race was a bit of snoozer, but I think we got to see which teams will be strong in the early months of the year. Obviously every time Kyle gets into a Truck or a Nationwide car, you 'd be stupid not to pencil him in for the win. On the cup side, as I anticipated, it was all the teams that you did not hear drama from that brought their cars to the front. Hendrick, Rousch, Gibbs, Penske, and even MWR were some of the quietest in the offseason in terms of driver lineup and restructuring. Low and behold, their staff was able to focus on preparing for races instead of worrying about their jobs. It is teams like Evernham or RPM whoevertheyare that are really going to strugle until they get their core organization in order and get the boat pointed in the right direction.

Since fuel mileage could play a role in the Vegas and the Atlanta race next week, I thought I would explain a little bit about how this is figured out. It is usually the job of the race engineer to calculate the fuel mileage for the crew chief. On smaller teams, and in the early days at RGM even, the crew chief can assume this role too. It is a pretty simple calculation really. The gas man has three big red dump cans of fuel ready to fuel the car at all times during the race. After they fill these up at the gas pumps in the garage area, they weigh them on an electronic scale to get the starting weight of the fuel and the gas can. This is usually in the neighborhood of 82-88 lbs. When the car is pitted, the gas man fills the car with fuel. On a full fuel run, this will take about a can and a half or so. After the pit stop, the gas man puts the fuel cans back on the scale and gets the final weight of the can and whatever fuel is left in the can. These numbers are then given to the engineer to figure out the mileage. The difference between the starting weight of the fuel can and the weight of the can after the stop is the total weight of fuel that is used. So now...

Fuel Used (lbs.)= Weight of Fuel Before Stop - Weight of Fuel After stop

The Sunoco people will weigh a known volume of fuel before the race to assess the density of the fuel for the weekend. (Remember HS physics) This varies slightly, mostly due to temperature, but it is normally about 6.3 lbs per gallon. So the gallons used is...

Fuel Used (gallons) = Fuel Used (lbs.) / 6.3 (lbs/gal)

On a full fuel run this will be approximately 18 gallons...Now what the engineer has to do is figure how many miles were run. Normally the amount of laps run is figured in "equivalent green laps". Each caution lap is normally figured as half of a green flag lap in terms of fuel consumption. So...

Equivalent Green laps = Green Flag Laps + (Yellow Flag Laps / 2)

So if there were 54 green laps and 4 caution laps, this would mean the car ran 56 equivalent green laps. Then you just multiply this by the length of the track to get the miles ran. In this case, 56 laps * 1.5 miles at Vegas = 84 miles.

Now, the mileage is easy. Number of miles ran divided by gallons used. In this case 84 miles / 18 gallons, which gives you 4.66 mpg.

The tricky part about this is that there are a couple of fudge factors to this calculation that rely on experience to figure out. One is that if there is spillage during the stop, then you have to try and estimate what it was and how it will effect the mileage. The other is handling. If the car is tight, the driver will try to steer the car with the throttle and thus use more fuel then when he is loose and trying to slowly put power down. So sometimes it is a bit of crap shoot. (I got my cliche in for the year.)

Vegas predictions. Robby has not had as bad a start to the season as this year in long time. In the last 3 or 4 years he has had good finishes at Daytona and California and been in the top 20 in points. Now he is the thirties, with the two short tracks looming in the near future which normally don't yeild good results. So, I think the 7 car will be a bit more aggressive at Vegas to get a good result and I feel the efforts will be rewarded with a top 25 if the Toyota power doesn't blow up. I don't think you can bet against the Hendrick stuff this week. I will go for a win for the 48 and my darkhorse is Stremme for a top 10.