Monday, March 10, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.
Two more NASCAR Winston Cup regulars have entered the Las Vegas 300 Busch Grand National Series race, to be run Sunday at the 1.5-mile Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
Fortunately for the 42 drivers in the field for the 300-mile event, neither of those late entrants was Mark Martin. Martin posted his third consecutive Busch Series win in Saturday's Stihl Outdoor Power Tools 300 at Atlanta Motor Speedway.
Mike Wallace, younger brother of former Winston Cup champion Rusty Wallace, and Greg Sacks will join seven other Winston Cup drivers in Sunday's race at LVMS. Other Winston Cup stars in the field will be Dale Jarrett, Terry and Bobby Labonte, Michael Waltrip, Jimmy Spencer, Joe Nemechek and Dick Trickle.
While the Busch Series drivers won't have Martin to contend with this weekend, they will have to battle Jarrett, who won Sunday's NASCAR Primestar 500 at AMS, leading 254 of 314 laps, and took over the Winston Cup Series points lead.
In addition to Jarrett, four Winston Cup drivers who will be racing in Las Vegas this weekend posted top-10 finishes Sunday in Atlanta. Bobby Labonte took fourth, Waltrip came in seventh and Terry Labonte, the defending Winston Cup champion, finished ninth.
In the Busch Series, Todd Bodine finished sixth Saturday and grabbed the points lead away from defending series champion Randy LaJoie. LaJoie was running in the top six until he had to make a pit stop on lap 180 (of 197) because wheel lug nuts had worked loose. LaJoie finished in 16th place and trails Bodine by 10 points coming into Las Vegas.
"A mistake was made," LaJoie said of his late-race troubles. "You can't make mistakes and win races and win championships. More than one lug nut (was loose) and it was vibrating like hell."
LaJoie did not express concern about losing the lead in the Busch points standings coming into the Las Vegas 300.
"We've got a lot of racing left," LaJoie said. "We ran second in the points all last season until the last five races. It doesn't pay until the end.
"I'm looking forward to racing at Las Vegas -- I think it's a great race track and it'll be a great show."
LaJoie will have an advantage over most of the drivers in the race in that he turned 30 laps on the Las Vegas superspeedway when he went through the Richard Petty Driving Experience this past winter.
Sawyer, who led the first 45 laps of Saturday's race, also said he was looking forward to bringing his Barbasol Ford Thunderbird to LVMS for the inaugural Las Vegas 300.
"When we started the race, the car was about perfect," Sawyer said of his second-place run that propelled him into fifth place in the Busch standings. "But we got a little loose and made some adjustments. We never could quite fix it, but just to be able to see Mark at the end of the race was an accomplishment.
"Our car was awful good and I was happy with it ... we'll just keep working on it and we'll get better."
Following Bodine (612 points) and LaJoie (602) in the season-long Busch Series points battle after four races are Martin (598); Phil Parsons (596); Sawyer (542); Roy "Buckshot" Jones (535); Mark Green (514); Elliott Sadler (496); Jeff Green (482); and Tim Fedewa (450).
Pole-position qualifying for the Las Vegas 300 will be held Friday beginning at 2 p.m. The NASCAR Southwest Tour will run for the first time on an oval larger than one mile Saturday night under the lights at LVMS and the Las Vegas 300 will get the green flag Sunday at 1 p.m.
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