Swindell earns 'Outlaws' win

Jeff Swindell used some lapped cars to hold off a furious charge by Donny Schatz and win the Pennzoil World of Outlaws "A" feature Monday night before a crowd of 9,000 at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway half-mile dirt oval.

Swindell led all but one of the 20 laps en route to his first feature win of the season.

"We've gone through a lot of bad times (this year), but this is Las Vegas and this is where we like it," Swindell said. "The team's coming together real well. We made some personnel changes about mid-summer and I'm getting my motor program straightened around."

In the battle for the World of Outlaws championship, Danny Lasoski finished 12th in the "A" feature and gained nine points on series leader Mark Kinser, who finished 21st.

Kinser still holds a 72-point edge over Lasoski, however, and needs only to show up to the track tonight and Wednesday night to secure the championship.

Swindell, who started on the pole for the "A" feature by virtue of his win in the five-lap ChannelLock Dash, led the first six laps before being overtaken by Schatz at the start/finish line on lap seven.

Schatz caught Swindell again between turns three and four two laps later, but an overturned car on lap nine brought out the red flag and nullified the pass.

"We got the breaks tonight," Swindell admitted. "Donny was moving around there a little bit on the race track and he found the bottom in (turns) three and four before I did and passed me twice there.

"I got him back the one time and the red (flag) came out the second time and it saved us because I don't know if we would have had a good shot back after that. The breaks went our way all night."

Swindell never relinquished his lead when the race resumed, and used lapped traffic in the closing laps to hold off Schatz.

"We ran up on a whole bunch of (slower cars) there and I was kind of worried about it coming to them and they broke on me just right going into three and they split just enough to let me get through," Swindell said.

Kinser, who swept both "A" features at LVMS in the spring and had five feature wins coming into this week's season finale, never was a factor Monday night.

Kinser was the second-fastest qualifier (behind Sammy Swindell) and finished second to Schatz in the second heat race, but he finished last among eight cars in the ChannelLock Dash and started eighth in the "A" feature.

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