Photos courtesy of Las Vegas Motor Speedway
Ron Capps didn’t envision the same thing the builders did but was too startstruck to add his input.
Although Capps had been driving for Don Prudhomme for two years, he kept his mouth shut as Prudhomme and Mario Andretti discussed the possibility of a championship drag strip being in place in less than a year.
“We drove out there and looked at the dirt. They had proposed building a drag strip,” Capps said. “I’m not even sure we saw the drawings at that point; we just knew that Bruton had talked about it.
Capps and Prudhomme were in Las Vegas for the SEMA Show in October 1999. With all the rumors of a new Vegas track, they visited what would become the other “Strip” in Las Vegas.
“We left the SEMA show that day, and I’m already freaking out because I’m driving for the Snake and in the same car as him,” Capps said. “And then you add Mario Andretti. And I think Michael Andretti was in the back seat with me. But I just remember thinking, looking over and seeing how big that Speedway was and seeing that in person was crazy, and just all the dirt that was there, that this was going to be a drag strip? And then to go back and walk up and see the grandstands and the suites, the tower. And they built it so fast, and it didn’t seem real the first time we walked up.”
Construction on the strip began in 1996 with former track owners Ralph Englestad and Bill Bennett and ex-LVMS president Richie Cly. Still, it didn’t go into hyperspeed until mid-August 1999 when Bruton Smith’s Speedway Inc. became involved. And for the record, it was built originally to be a four-lane drag strip.
The state-of-the-art facility, an estimated $10 million investment, opened for its inaugural event on April 6, with an estimated seating of 30,000 to 40,000 spectators.
Capps remembered the feeling of larger than life when he drove through the gates of that inaugural race weekend.
” I was like, ‘Man, we’re going to race here.” And I was only a few years into my professional driving, so the fact that it was such good timing for me to be involved in the sport that we would be going to that track for the first time and racing was pretty cool.”
It didn’t take long for Capps to realize this shiny new strip, in its infancy, would present some teething pains.
“It was very green,” Capps said. “There was not a lot of rubber on the track. And I remember that first race weekend, there were a lot of Top Fuel dragsters, too. And we were all having a hard time getting the tires stuck to the track. There was a lot of pedaling going on. There were huge upsets. I remember that.
“Everybody was really having to be delicate trying to pedal the cars and get them down. It was just a lack of rubber and a lack of runs on the track. I can’t remember who won, but I just remember it was an exciting time to be in Las Vegas and be a drag racer.”
