Jimmie Johnson's Las Vegas Championship tour activities began Tuesday

Chad Knaus and Johnson with Eli Gold on radio from Wynn sports book

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. (Dec. 3, 2013) – Jimmie Johnson’s four-day, Las Vegas whirlwind odyssey has begun. NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Champion’s Week™ in Las Vegas officially is underway.

The six-time NASCAR Sprint Cup Series™ champion’s rounds of Las Vegas media outlets began early Tuesday with interviews with a pair of top-rated rock and country music radio stations; CBS, FOX and Univision television outlets; MRN Radio and the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

The FOX studio boasts a NASCAR-themed slot machine, at which celebrities are invited to try their luck – all in the name of charity. Johnson hit a $250 jackpot to which he added $300 for donation to the Nevada Childhood Cancer Foundation.

Johnson also participated in a Q&A session at the 2013 NASCAR Motorsports Marketing Forum and then visited the iconic “Welcome to Las Vegas” sign at the south end of the famed Las Vegas Strip where he signed autographs for waiting fans.

Tuesday’s activities wound down with a round of photos and the annual Champion’s Dinner with NASCAR President Mike Helton and others. The action-packed week culminates with the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Awards™ (Dec. 6, with FOX Sports 2 and NASCAR.com providing coverage beginning at 9 p.m. ET; Motor Racing Network and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio Channel 90 at 8 p.m. ET).

It’s been three years since Johnson celebrated a championship in Las Vegas although as a Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup™ contender he attended the 2011-12 ceremonies. That obviously motivated Johnson to return to the head table – which he’s now done six times.

“Winning races does it all,” he told NASCAR Motorsports Marketing Forum attendees. “That is my focus and my brand. What is next, (that’s) what keeps you motivated.”

That Johnson is one championship away from matching the record seven NASCAR Sprint Cup titles won by NASCAR Hall of Famers Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt figured prominently in questions Johnson fielded during the day’s events.

He admitted to still being a bit overwhelmed by his success.

Jimmie Johnson on the Las Vegas strip with trophy No. 6

“I never could have dreamed this big; when I hear my name mentioned alongside Petty and Earnhardt,” he said. “It still feels surreal.”

Champion’s Week activities for Johnson began Monday in Los Angeles where the Californian visited the FOX Sports campus. He appeared on FOX Sports 1’s FOX Sports Live and taped segments with The OT and UFC Tonight, the latter slated to air at 7 p.m. ET, on Wednesday, Dec. 4. A sit-down interview with FOX’s Curt Menefee also will be broadcast at a later date.

Before flying to Los Angeles, Johnson and his crew chief Chad Knaus visited the corporate headquarters of the No. 48 team’s sponsor Lowe’s in Mooresville, N.C., where they presented the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series championship trophy to a large crowd of associates.

Here are upcoming Champion’s Week events at a glance (all times local PT unless noted):

Wednesday, Dec. 4

·        2013 NASCAR Motorsports Marketing Forum: The 14th annual NASCAR Motorsports Marketing Forum, presented by SportsBusiness Daily / Global / Journal, is the motorsports industry’s most comprehensive business forum. Held at Aria Resort & Casino, the Forum will provide a 360-degree overview of motorsports by featuring insight and perspective from sports and marketing executives both within and outside the motorsports industry. Registration is required at www.MotorsportsMarketingForum.com.

Wednesday – Friday, Dec. 4-6

·        NASCAR Pit Stop Tour: The NASCARPit Stop Tour consists of Official Partner show cars featured in iconic locations throughout the Las Vegas Strip from 10 a.m. – 6 p.m. each day. Fans can get up close and personal with the cars at the following locations: Tropicana (Chevrolet), The Palazzo (Ford), Harrah’s (Ford), the “Welcome to Las Vegas” sign (2013 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champion show car), the Coca-Cola store and M&M’S World.

·        M&M’S^® To Make the NASCAR CHAMPION’S WEEK™ ‘BETTER WITH M’: M&M’S will celebrate the 2013 NASCAR season and the strongest finish yet for Kyle Busch, driver of the No. 18 M&M’S Toyota Camry, by giving away one million free bags of M&M’S. The giveaway in Las Vegas will be part of the NASCAR Pit Stop Tour and NASCAR Victory Lap.

Jimmie Johnson and Chad Knaus enjoying view from Foundation Room 

Wednesday, Dec. 4

·        Fanfest Presented by Las Vegas Motor Speedway: The fifth annual LVMS Fanfest will again be held at the Fremont Street Experience, and begin at 1:30 p.m. with the arrival of the 13 Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup drivers. This event is free to the public and will consist of a red carpet walk by the 13 drivers, followed by a special “game show format” on-stage event featuring the drivers. Race fans will have the chance to win two tickets to the 2013 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Awards to be held two nights later at Wynn Las Vegas.

·        Betty Jane France Humanitarian Award Reception: This year’s finalists for the Betty Jane France Humanitarian Award will be honored at a reception at Wynn Las Vegas from 4:30 – 5:30 p.m. The NASCAR Foundation will announce the award winner during this year’s NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Awards on Friday, Dec. 6. Fans can cast their vote for the 2013 Betty Jane France Humanitarian Award winner by visitingwww.NASCAR.com/award before 11:59 p.m. ET on Dec. 5.

Thursday, Dec. 5

·        NASCAR NMPA Myers Brothers Awards Luncheon: The annual awards luncheon and industry gathering will be held from 11 a.m. – 1:15 p.m. in the Encore Ballroom at Wynn Las Vegas, where several team and individual awards will be presented. Among those awards included are the Champion Sponsor, Champion Crew Chief, Sunoco Rookie of the Year and NMPA Most Popular Driver awards. The event will be live-streamed onwww.NASCAR.com.

·        NASCAR Victory Lap: The green flag on the fan-favorite NASCAR Victory Lap will wave at 3:30 p.m. with pre-lap festivities beginning at 2:45 p.m., when the 13 Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup drivers parade down Las Vegas Boulevard in their race cars. NASCAR Victory Lap will start and finish in front of the Miracle Mile Shops on Las Vegas Boulevard and will once again provide fans with a unique experience to feel the excitement of NASCAR, featuring driver introductions, an authentic pit stop in front of the Fountains of Bellagio (performed by members of the NASCAR Drive

for Diversity Pit Crew Development Program Presented by Sprint) and two burnout sections – with viewing areas along the route. Portions of the event will be broadcast live on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio Channel 90 andwww.NASCAR.com will live-stream the event.

·        NASCAR After The Lap sponsored by Ford and Coca-Cola: One of the premier events of NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Champion’s Week, NASCAR After The Lap sponsored by Ford and Coca-Cola will be held from 5 – 6:30 p.m. at The Pearl Palms Concert Theater inside the Palms Casino Hotel. Fans can purchase tickets atwww.NASCARAfterTheLap.com for $20 each (all ticket proceeds benefit The NASCAR Foundation) to attend the fan-favorite event featuring all 13 Chase

for the NASCAR Sprint Cup drivers. Among the many highlights from NASCAR After The Lap’s humorous history are Jeff Gordon break dancing and Denny Hamlin doing “The Dougie.” The event will be broadcast live on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio Channel 90 and www.NASCAR.com will live-stream the event.

Friday, Dec. 6

·        2013 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Awards: The postseason black-tie event will begin at 5 p.m. at Wynn Las Vegas, where the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champion driver and owner will be crowned and the top-10 drivers in the final standings will be honored. The NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Awards, the culmination of Champion’s Week, will feature the NASCAR Fan Reception, Red Carpet Walk, celebrity guests, music and entertainment. FOX Sports 2, www.NASCAR.com, Motor Racing Network and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio Channel 90 will provide coverage of the event.

For more information on the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Champion’s Week in Las Vegas, visitwww.NASCAR.com/ChampionsWeek.

About NASCAR

The National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing, Inc. (NASCAR) is the sanctioning body for the No. 1 form of motorsports in the United States. NASCAR consists of three national series (the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series™, NASCAR Nationwide Series™, and NASCAR Camping World Truck Series™), four regional series, one local grassroots series and three international series. The International Motor Sports Association (IMSA) governs the TUDOR United SportsCar Championship™, the premier U.S. sports car series. Based in Daytona Beach, Fla., with offices in eight cities across North America, NASCAR sanctions more than 1,200 races in more than 30 U.S. states, Canada, Mexico and Europe. For more information, visit www.nascar.com and follow NASCAR at www.facebook.com/NASCARand Twitter: @NASCAR.

Still More Work to be Done on the Gen-6 Car?

22 lead changes among eight drivers Sunday at Las Vegas

LAS VEGAS — What was mostly a single-file race for the first half of the Kobalt Tools 400 Sunday produced a decent finish Sunday at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

There were enough caution flags and pit strategies to make the outcome undetermined until the final lap.

There also were a few daring three-wide moves and some decent side-by-side battles. In other words, a typical 1.5-mile race.

What we learned from Matt Kenseth’s victory Sunday at Las Vegas:

New car needs work

In a world where you can always find statistics to tell your story, NASCAR put out some to tell the story of its new Sprint Cup car Sunday.

The race featured 31 green-flag passes for the lead (by its scoring loops, not laps) and 2,342 passes overall. That’s compared to 15 passes for the lead and 1,301 overall a year ago.

Read More Here.....Sporting News

Betting Notes: 2013 Kobalt Tools 400 at Las Vegas

Kevin Harvick has a great chance to win in Las Vegas

By Micah Roberts
Las Vegas Review-Journal

The NASCAR Sprint Cup Series makes its 16th visit to Las Vegas Motor Speedway today, and most sports books have gone full throttle with their menu for wagers.

Here are some of the best value opportunities based on the premise that four-time Las Vegas winner Jimmie Johnson will continue to be strong, last week's Phoenix winner and two-time Vegas winner Carl Edwards is going to run well, and Kevin Harvick might finally win at the track where he made his Cup debut.

ODDS TO WIN

The best value on Johnson to win was offered at Aliante and William Hill books at 6-1. Edwards was 11-1 at William Hill, and Harvick was 18-1 at Cantor Gaming.

This is a track at which the favorite usually wins. The reigning Cup champion has won this race four times, and six times the Las Vegas winner went on to capture the season championship. Bottom line: Expect no surprises today.

If you must take a crack at someone with long odds, Ricky Stenhouse Jr. (50-1 at Cantor) was outstanding in practice Saturday and looks to have the same quality setup as fast teammates Edwards and Greg Biffle. The best overall value when combining odds to quality of car is Harvick.

WHICH MANUFACTURER WILL HAVE MORE TOP-10 FINISHERS? FORD AND TOYOTA PLUS-130 VS. CHEVY (CANTOR)

By the numbers, you'll see you have an edge with 26 cars being either a Toyota or Ford against 17 Chevys. Chevy's legitimate number of contenders becomes lighter when considering all four Hendrick cars, maybe two from Childress and possibly two Stewart-Haas cars have a chance to run well. That's only eight Chevys and a small window of opportunity to get six of them in the top 10 that it would take to lose this wager.

Six Chevys finished in the top 10 at Daytona, where anyone has a chance, and five finished in the top 10 at Phoenix. This looks like a spot in which the worst-case scenario might be a push with five Fords and Toyotas finishing in the top 10, but there is much more upside with the MWR, Gibbs, Roush and Penske teams to have six, and since it's offered at plus-money, the bettor has an edge.

Read More Here......

Las Vegas Betting Preview: 2013 Kobalt Tools 400

By Micah Roberts

Johnson is the 5/1 favorite to win for the fifth time in Vegas (Getty)

The betting on the NASCAR races this weekend will be the most action Las Vegas sports books will see on auto racing this year. The books will also offer the most betting options, but don’t expect to see the same amount of betting propositions like we saw last month for the Super Bowl, or the same type of handle that helped generate a state record $98 million in Super Bowl handle. Most sports books offered over 250 different Super Bowl props. This weekend, we'll see an average of about 30 per property for Sunday‘s race.

But the big difference between pro football and NASCAR, besides the obvious, is that football and betting have gone hand in hand since the NFL began, and prospered because of it. NFL commissioner Roger Goodell might think otherwise, but the truth is that NASCAR is where Goodell thinks the NFL is regards to betting -- a small part of the overall experience and not defined by it.

Betting on NASCAR has been a relatively new revelation that was spurred on by the Las Vegas Motor Speedway when the first Cup race came to town in 1998. The sport was already wildly popular without betting, and was at peak growth period in their history. All the sports books wanted to do was just offer a few things that bettors might want to bet; a driver vs. driver matchup, who will have the best finish. And of course there was also odds to win on the event as well.

Sports books took notice of the volume on that initial race won by Mark Martin and figured there was a market for NASCAR in the sports books and most began offering odds on a weekly basis. The weekly handle without the race in town plummeted, but what it did was help get the majority of books out there to at least pay attention to it. If you offer odds on something, you shouldn’t have the majority of your betting public being smarter than you, so books followed it.

Read More Here......Top 5 Finish Prediction

LVH Odds to Win: 2013 Kobalt Tools 400

Jimmie Johnson is the 5-to-1 favorite at Las Vegas (Getty)

LAS VEGAS -- The LVH SuperBook has installed Jimmie Johnson as the 5-to-1 favorite to win Sunday's Kobalt Tools 400 at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway, which doesn't come as much of a surprise since Johnson is a four-time winner in Las Vegas and has a track-best 9.8 average finish.

Johnson also finds himself leading in points after two races and is the overwhelming 3-to-1 favorite to win the 2013 NASCAR Sprint Cup Championship.

The interesting look this week is Carl Edwards, who broke a 70-race winless streak last week at Phoenix. Prior to Sunday, Edwards’ most recent win came at Las Vegas in 2011. He also claimed a Vegas victory in 2008 and is right behind Johnson with a 10.3 average finish at the track.

While Phoenix and Las Vegas are two completely different types of tracks, we can still take a lot of what we learned from the Gen-6 car at Phoenix and apply it to Las Vegas. Had Edwards had a decent run and a top-0 finish at Phoenix, he would have been around 15-to-1 to win this week. But because of the win, he is one of the favorites at 9-to-1.

Read More Here...........

Jeff Gordon Looking for Second Las Vegas Win on Sunday

Gordon is 12-to-1 to win Sunday at Las Vegas (Getty)

LAS VEGAS, Nev. (March 4, 2013) - A second trip to Victory Lane for Jeff Gordon at Las Vegas? If it happens this Sunday in the Kobalt Tools 400, it probably will be a bumpy ride.

Along with his lone win in 2001, Gordon has six top-fives and seven top-10′s in 15 starts at the 1.5-mile track. He knows his way around Las Vegas Motor Speedway (LVMS), pacing the field 457 times.

“There are some bumps down in turns 1 and 2 that you really need your car to get through,” said Gordon, who is eighth in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series point standings. “They’re in the low line – the preferred line.

“In turns 3 and 4, you’ll usually run low.”

While there are preferred lines at each end of the track, there are also multiple racing grooves that give drivers the option to search for lines that may work better for the setup underneath the car.

“If your car is not working through the bumps in turns 1 and 2, you can run above them,” said Gordon. “And I really like (turns) 3 and 4 because you have a lot of different options through there, as well.

“You can definitely change your entry into turn 3 and your line through the corner to get the most out of the car.”

With the introduction of the new generation of cars (Gen-6) this season, LVMS will host an extra day of NASCAR Sprint Cup Series testing Thursday. The driver of the No. 24 Drive To End Hunger Chevrolet SS knows information gathered during the test could prove invaluable.

“Testing is very important,” said Gordon. “When you have telemetry on the car, it gives us the opportunity to learn more about the loads and the bumps and what the car is going through, like ride heights of the front splitter. It gives us the opportunity to gather so much valuable information that we can use for the race on Sunday.

“And every lap we log helps us understand and learn more about our new No. 24 Chevy SS.”

- Performance PR Plus

Aliante Odds to Win 2013 Kobalt Tools 400 at Las Vegas

Johnson 7/1 to win at Las Vegas in March (Getty)

Aliante Sports Book
Odds to win 2013 Kobalt Tools 400
Las Vegas Motor Speedway
Sunday, March 10, 2013

Jimmie Johnson 7-1
Tony Stewart 8-1
Greg Biffle 10-1
Kyle Busch 10-1
Kasey Kahne 12-1 (now down to 10-1)
Brad Keselowski 12-1
Denny Hamlin 12-1
Matt Kenseth 12-1
Clint Bowyer 12-1
Carl Edwards 12-1
Dale Earnhardt, Jr. 15-1
Kevin Harvick 15-1
Jeff Gordon 15-1
Ricky Stenhouse, Jr. 18-1
Ryan Newman 18-1
Martin Truex, Jr. 20-1
Joey Logano 22-1
Mark Martin 30-1
Jeff Burton 30-1
Juan Montoya 30-1
Paul Menard 40-1
Jamie McMurray 50-1
Marcos Ambrose 75-1
Aric Almirola 75-1
Kurt Busch 75-1
Regan Smith 150-1
Danica Patrick 250-1
Casey Mears 250-1
Bobby Labonte 250-1
Field 75-1

Buy Tickets from LVMS