{"id":23918,"date":"2019-03-02T19:20:26","date_gmt":"2019-03-03T01:20:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/?p=23918"},"modified":"2019-03-03T09:49:36","modified_gmt":"2019-03-03T15:49:36","slug":"saturday-las-vegas-notebook","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/2019\/03\/02\/saturday-las-vegas-notebook\/","title":{"rendered":"Saturday Las Vegas Notebook"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Alex Bowman: Hendrick has to raise its game before sims can be useful<\/b><\/p>\n

LAS VEGAS \u2013 You\u2019ve heard the term \u201cgym rat?\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a player who wears out the hardwood with extra basketball practice.<\/p>\n

Well, Alex Bowman used to be a \u201csim\u201d rat.<\/p>\n

Before he landed his current full-time ride in the No. 88 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet, Bowman\u2019s day job was driving the organization\u2019s simulator, helping to fine-tune the HMS Chevys of Jimmie Johnson, Kasey Kahne, Chase Elliott and Dale Earnhardt Jr.<\/p>\n

With Earnhardt and Kahne now retired, and succeeded by Bowman and William Byron, respectively, you might think simulator work would be even more important to the HMS drivers.<\/p>\n

You\u2019d be wrong.<\/p>\n

In a surprising revelation at Las Vegas Motor Speedway on Friday, Bowman said he hasn\u2019t been in the simulator at all this year \u2013 even with a new competition package making its debut in the 2019 season. The reason? Hendrick struggled through a trying 2018 season and doesn\u2019t have its cars at a consistently high enough level of performance to make simulator work reliable and useful.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think I\u2019ve been in a simulator in\u2026 I think I got ready for Watkins Glen there last year, and that was it,\u201d said Bowman, who will start 11th in Sunday\u2019s Pennzoil 400 Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series race (3:30 p.m. ET on FOX, PRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio). \u201cI haven\u2019t been in there. It\u2019s kind of hit-and-miss. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe tried to use it a lot at the beginning of last year and kind of felt like some places it\u2019s kind of got us off of where we needed to be, and other places it really helped. We weren\u2019t at a spot with our race cars where we could consistently use it effectively.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think once we get our race cars to where we need to be and we can focus on that, it\u2019s something we can use a lot, but we\u2019ve got all the focus on trying to get the race cars where they need to be right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Austin Dillon, driver of the #3 Dow SILASTIC Silicone Elastomers Chevrolet, practices for the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series Pennzoil 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway on March 2, 2019 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Photo by Sarah Crabill\/Getty Images)<\/p><\/div>\n

RCR CARS ARE FASTEST IN RACE TRIM DURING SATURDAY PRACTICE<\/b><\/p>\n

The two cars that were fastest in qualifying trim on Friday retained that distinction in Saturday\u2019s only Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series practice session at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.<\/p>\n

The No. 3 Chevrolet of Austin Dillon and No. 8 Chevy of Daniel Hemric ran 1-2 during a wild practice session that preceded the Boyd Gaming 300 NASCAR Xfinity Series race at the 1.5-mile track. Dillon covered the distance in 30.299 seconds (178.224 mph) on his fastest lap, with Hemric, his Richard Childress teammate, at 30.496 seconds (177.072 mph).<\/p>\n

Hemric, though, was fastest in 10-consecutive-lap average (176.181 mph), narrowly edging Dillon (175.975 mph) for that distinction.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe car is pretty good,\u201d said Danny Stockman, Dillon\u2019s crew chief. \u201cWe had a good test here a month ago. There are a lot of other good, fast cars. It\u2019s just so tough, this Cup Series with all these great drivers and all these really good teams.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s so close and getting the balance right is super important, and that\u2019s what we worked on right here in Happy Hour. I think we\u2019re close. We need to be a little bit better. The speed is definitely there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Note: Saturday\u2019s scheduled early morning practice session was canceled because of rain, which cleared out in time for Happy Hour.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service   Alex Bowman: Hendrick has to raise its game before sims can be useful LAS VEGAS \u2013 You\u2019ve heard the term \u201cgym rat?\u201d That\u2019s a player who wears out the hardwood with extra basketball practice. Well, Alex Bowman used to be a \u201csim\u201d rat. Before he landed his current […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":676,"featured_media":23922,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11],"tags":[72,67,16,708],"class_list":["post-23918","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nascar","tag-boyd-gaming-300","tag-las-vegas-motor-speedway","tag-nascar","tag-pennzoil-400"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/racedaysa.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/mencs_lvms_ad3fastestfinalpractice_030219.jpg?fit=3270%2C2179&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7hzTZ-6dM","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23918","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/676"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23918"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23918\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23923,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23918\/revisions\/23923"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}