Las Vegas Weekend Recap

Las Vegas Weekend Recap:

                                                       

Stating their case........that could sum up what victories at Las Vegas by Tony Stewart and Ricky Stenhouse Jr. meant in the big picture this past weekend. 

Stenhouse cruised to his first victory of 2012, first at anywhere other than Iowa, and third career victory overall. The defending series champ pulled away from Cup series veteran Mark Martin on the final 39 lap run and won easily after pole-sitter and last week's winner, Elliott Sadler, dominated the majority of the race. Sadler retained his points lead while Stenhouse jumped up to 3rd in the standing behind Sadler and Austin Dillon. 

The big thing about this win for Stenhouse is that it hopefully opens up the eyes of potential sponsors to keep this kid racing this year. It's no secret that the organization Stenhouse drives for, Roush-Fenway, has had sponsorship struggles the last few seasons, more so than many other organizations. They already had to close one of their Sprint Cup teams and the may shut down Stenhouse's Nationwide teammate Trevor Bayne this week if no sponsorship is acquired. Stenhouse also does not have enough sponsorship to run the full season, but if he keeps performing like this, you have to imagine someone will sponsor the guy. Keep it up Ricky!

Turning to the Sprint Cup Series........Tony is here!! Stewart redeemed himself from his failure to win here last year and dominated most of the latter half of the race to score his first career Las Vegas win, leaving only Darlington and Kentucky as the only two tracks where he hasn't visited victory lane. This win was big in a few ways, the first and most obvious being that Stewart held off a hungry, fast Jimmie Johnson, who tends to dominate at Vegas. After repeated restarts at the end, Stewart held of Johnson time and time again, showing he was not going to be out dueled. But this win was also big because it gave justification to Stewart's firing of his champion crew chief from last season Darian Grubb. Grubb, of course, won last week with Denny Hamlin at Phoenix and people wondered if Stewart made a big mistake. Stewart, though, stuck by his decision and whooped the field at Vegas and has now won 6 of the last 13 races dating back to last season. That's just sick.

Stewart now jumps up to 7th in the points standings after three races with this win also being his first top 5 and top 10 of the season. Greg Biffle assumes the points lead from Denny Hamlin after finishing 3rd yet again. He's finished in 3rd all three races this year, a pretty impressive trend. The series now heads to "Thunder Valley" otherwise known as Bristol Motor Speedway in Bristol, TN, a perennial fan favorite. 

Check back tomorrow for Twitter Tuesday!