Rack 'em: Burton wins again in Las Vegas

LAS VEGAS -- - Jeff Burton should be so fortunate at the casinos as he is on the track at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

Burton, driver of the No. 9 Gain Ford, captured the checkered flag for the second time in the Sam's Town 300 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

Counting his two Winston Cup Series victories here, Burton now has four victories at the 1.5-mile track. The victory also makes him the first driver to win two Busch Series races at Las Vegas.

Starting from the pole, Burton led six times for 149 laps of the 200-lap race and beat runner-up finisher Michael Waltrip by over eight seconds.

The only thing that could've stopped Burton -- it seemed -- was rookie Scott Riggs. Riggs was leading when his battery failed on lap 135. He finished 34th, 15 laps down.

"I am really proud," Burton said. "Brad Parrott (crew chief) has come in and done a great job. We're really organized and we have nice, new race cars.

"We kind of revamped this program and brought some new life to it and I'm just so proud of it because this thing deserves to be right where it is - in Victory Lane."

During a mid-race pit stop, Burton's team was slower then usual and that forced Burton to make up about 10 spots to regain the lead.

"(Riggs) was pretty fast and that was the worst we were all day," Burton said. "We were really tight. I didn't really push anything that hard. He was running really hard and I knew there were a lot of laps left.

"We were kind of biding our time. He was going to be hard, though. He was real fast."

Waltrip was also the victim of a bad stop and had to battle back from a lap down.

The bad stop was the result of a problem air gun on the right-front tire. Waltrip was still thankful for the second-place finish, but wished things would have played out differently at the end.

"I really wish there would have been a caution there at the end," Waltrip said. "I wanted to get up there and mix it up with five laps to go so that big crowd up there would have something to cheer about.

"I'm just real disappointed we didn't get in Victory Lane. We kind of joke about the fact we build these cars behind my house and can compete with the best of them like that. It gives us a lot of pride.

"We did the same thing at Daytona by losing a lap and making it up to finish second. This is very rewarding because this is a difficult track for me personally."

Another driver reaping the rewards of good finishes is rookie driver Johnny Sauter. He wheeled the No. 2 ACDelco Chevy to his first top-five finish this year with his third place finish.

"This is a really good team to begin with," Sauter said. "We made all the right calls in the pits today. Our chassis wasn't exactly right, but we kept working on it and came away with a top five."

Rounding out the top 10 were Kevin Lepage, Jeff Green, Jack Sprague, Randy LaJoie, Kenny Wallace, Greg Biffle and Stacy Compton.

There were 16 lead changes among 11 drivers. The length of race was two hours and 25 minutes. Five caution flags flew for 31 laps.

Jack Sprague took over the points lead with a sixth-place finish. Jason Keller, points leader coming into the race, had a 22nd-place finish and dropped to third.

The series is off next weekend and returns to action at Darlington Raceway on Sat., March 16.