LAS VEGAS -- In Las Vegas, appearances can be deceiving. The glittering neon obscures dusty alleyways, boorish drunks and addicts gambling away their savings. False eyelashes and pancake makeup hide the true age of the showgirl. And nine caution flags masked just how perilous Sunday's race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway really was.

"There were like top-10 saves [Sunday]. There were some saves that were miraculous," Dale Earnhardt Jr. said after exiting his No. 8 car. "There were a lot of guys getting out of control."

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Sheer talent prevented the UAW-DaimlerChrysler 400 from becoming a debacle on the scale of Saturday's Busch race at the recently altered 1.5-mile track, which included an event-record 12 cautions and took nearly three hours to complete. The Nextel Cup event featured just nine yellow flags, a relatively low amount on any speedway. It wasn't even close to the 22-caution, tire-blowing extravaganza the sport witnessed the last time an intermediate circuit was overhauled in 2005.

And for that we can thank the innate driving ability of the men behind the wheel, who were tested by a combination of tire and racetrack akin to rolling a marble on a granite countertop. On almost every lap there were wiggles and wobbles and cars yawing left and right. And on almost every lap there were drivers sawing wood on the steering wheel, keeping the nose pointed forward, and making the race appear much more benign than it really was.

"I predicted much more gloom and doom than this," said Mark Martin, who finished fifth. "I want to give a shout out to all the drivers [Sunday]. They were extremely cautious. Very smart driving, as smart as I've ever seen these guys drive under all the pressure that they're under. They all did a great job, and it wasn't nearly as much of a disaster as I thought it was going to be."

That's because of the NASCAR-mandated smaller fuel cell, which shortened green-flag runs. That's because the harder left-side tire, implemented by Goodyear because of a spate of testing crashes here in January. But most of all it was because of the drivers, who were sent out onto a slick new track on a tire compound none of them had any previous experience with, and salvaged what could have been a disastrous situation.

Plenty of drivers broke loose and hit the wall. Plenty more broke loose and didn't. The latter group includes race winner Jimmie Johnson, who claimed his third consecutive Las Vegas event despite one harrowing moment when the back of his No. 48 car tried to come around on him, and he somehow straightened it out.

"I had two or three incidents myself where I lost control of the car. With the sun beating down on the track and this hard of a tire, it's tough for us," Johnson said.

"If we continue to work with this tire, we'll make it better and we'll figure out how to make it work. But you have two hours of practice to get you ready for qualifying, and an hour and a half of practice on Saturday, and you get 30 laps per practice session if you're lucky. You don't know what to adjust on. You're shooting in the dark, and that's where the frustration came from. That's where the ill-handling cars came from [Sunday]."

Drivers didn't blame the management at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, often raving about the new surface and how competitive it may become after a few years of weathering. Many competitors were hesitant to blame NASCAR, conceding that the sanctioning body had to make a difficult decision. They just didn't appreciate being stuck in the middle of it, especially with so little preparation.

"Man, your car is out of control. When you go down in the corner, you're just going down in there, hanging on. There's no trying to adjust your line, you're just trying not to wreck. You just drive down in there and hang on. That thing slides where it wants to go, and you get out of the corner, and you do it again and again and again all day long. No fun," Earnhardt said.

"I feel for NASCAR in this position, because I would have made the same choice. You can't take a chance of bringing a soft tire and having guys popping right-fronts and going into the fence and breaking legs and breaking ribs and stuff like that. That didn't happen, so we can be glad that didn't happen. I wouldn't have wanted to have been in NASCAR's shoes prior to this to make that choice. I wouldn't want to be in their shoes right now. Tough call."

Johnson wasn't quite as diplomatic.

"If these guys didn't bring the right car to the track, their butts would be on the line," he said, referring to his race team. "I know Goodyear is working very hard, but we have to bring the right tire. I don't know how we get there, whether it's more tire testing or bringing more cars to the track for tire testing, but something needs to be addressed to where we know we have the right tire. The sport is too big to be dealing with last-minute changes."

So it was left to the drivers to fend for themselves, skating along on the ragged edge, trying to be fast and cautious all at the same time. That so many of them succeeded is a testament not to NASCAR, but to the quick reflex and steely nerves that made Sunday's race at Las Vegas appear much more routine that it really was.

"It was a very bad weekend for everybody in Busch and Cup. We were all put in a very precarious situation. I'm just glad to get out of here, No. 1, with my Busch car in one piece. I'm glad we didn't tear this one up, too," Earnhardt said.

"The track is out of control. The cars are out of control. We're in a bad way right here with this sport right now, with the way things were this weekend and the way things might be at Bristol [when the Car of Tomorrow debuts]. The enjoyment part of it, we'll have to wait on it for about a month."

The opinions expressed are solely of the writer.