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The NASCAR
Winston Cup weekend in Las Vegas started on Thursday
afternoon with the pairings for this weekends NO BULL 5
portion of the UAW Daimler/Chrysler 400. The pairings took
place at the luxurious Mandalay Bay Hotel, home of the show
STORM.
They first
started the show with a little tease of the multi-cultural
musical. Then the drivers that are eligible for the one
million dollar bonus were introduced. The drivers that are
going to be participating are last weeks winner at the rock,
Matt Kenseth, Bobby Hamilton, Jeff Burton, Tony Stewart, and
Dale Earnhardt Jr. These drivers were the top 5 finishers of
the last NO BULL 5 race, last October at the EA Sports 500
at Talladega. Dale Earnhardt Jr. won 1 million dollars at
that race along with making one fan very rich.
Before the
pairings got underway, it was announced that there would be
a new type of trophy given to the winner of the race. It’s a
boxing like championship belt. Since this will now be the
standard for this race yearly, I spoke to a rep from ISC and
she shared with me that the winners from the previous
Winston Cup races held at LVMS will be getting a belt just
like the one that will be given to the winner on Sunday.
The format for the parings involved a game of blackjack with
the 5 drivers. The rules were that each driver was given 50
million dollars in special chips that they could play
through 5 hands of blackjack and the driver with the most
money after the 5 hands would be paired with the #1 fan and
so on and so on all the way down to the #5 driver/fan
paring.
In hand #1 nobody beat the dealer, hand #2 Tony Stewart was
the only one to win. Hand #3 nobody won but Bobby Hamilton
pushed his hand with the dealer. Hand #4, everyone won their
hand but Tony Stewart busted. The final hand was rather
long, there were 2 misdeals by the dealer but after the hand
was done, the only person who lost again was Tony Stewart.
Matter of fact, he went bust so he ended up being the number
5 driver. The number 4 driver in the parings went to Jeff
Burton. Number 3 went to Dale Earnhardt Jr. and the #2 and
#1 was determined by a extra hand between Matt Kenseth and
Bobby Hamilton, with Matt Kenseth taking the top spot.
After the Blackjack Tournament, the media was treated to a
25-minute interview session with the 5 drivers. I got a
chance to talk to Tony Stewart and I asked him, “With
Daytona Behind him and a strong run at the rock, are you
more focused on your quest for the Winston Cup Title?” Tony
told me that “If I honestly said that we were more focused,
then we did something wrong the first two races. We were
focused from the time we showed up at Daytona and it was
just a situation were we had a bad week at Daytona and you
gotta just throw it out and forget about it we did that and
we went on to Rockingham and had a good run, and now that
race is over with and gotta get that out of our heads and
put 100 percent of our interests into looking at Las Vegas
and not thinking about the first 2 races and just push
forward and worry about the task at hand.” He also shared
how excited he was about this race and the fact that RJ
Reynolds puts up this bonus “It’s something that the Home
Depot team can go out and work hard for plus possibly making
a fans dream come true makes it all the more special.”
Just by listening to all the participants involved, talking
about the NO BULL 5 program, I see that this gives a little
added bonus to go out and try for. I could tell that they
were all excited about the chance at a little extra cash,
but then again, who wouldn’t.
The author can be contacted nascar@autoracing1.com
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