Las Vegas Sprint Cup Race Now 7% Better

Tony Stewart has to be excited about that headline.

Wednesday brought good news to any race fan who already has tickets to the Sprint Cup race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway in March of 2009.

The track, thanks to a new race-naming sponsorship from Shelby Automobiles (the company created and ran by Carroll Shelby, a legend in the sports car world), will now name the race the Shelby 427. And I promise, 427 wasn't just a randomly picked number:

The Sprint Cup Series event at Las Vegas Motor Speedway on March 1, 2009 will be sponsored by Shelby Automobiles. The event will be lengthened to 427 miles and will be called the "Shelby 427."

Together, LVMS and Shelby will market a Las Vegas Motor Speedway Limited Edition Shelby 427 package for the Ford Shelby GT500 Mustang.

Interesting. A "Las Vegas Motor Speedway Limited Edition Shelby 427 package" is certainly a mouthful, but more importantly, that's going to be one big emblem to slap on the rear end of a mustang. LXi or Limited apparently was not available.

This package will be available to 427 previous Shelby GT500 owners on a first-come first-serve basis, and will include Carroll Shelby's autograph, race tickets and a chance at being the race's honorary starter. For more info on that, check out the LVMS web site.

Changing the race length for a race-naming is nothing new in NASCAR competition, though it doesn't happen too often. The April Sprint Cup race at Talladega Superspeedway is currently named the Aaron's 499, though it is still technically a 500-mile race.

The Nationwide Series race at Talladega on the same weekend goes by the moniker of "Aaron's 312" and is a 312-mile race because of the Aaron's rental stores slogan of "3 ways to buy, 12 reasons to shop at Aaron's!".

Anyways, enough of the sponsorship lingo and back to the main point. Get out and buy a ticket for the Vegas race in March! It's a nearly 7 percent better value than the 2008 edition!