Track painters stay inside the lines

It was a little past 10 a.m. Wednesday at the start-finish line at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, where the wind mostly had stopped blowing.

A young guy named Ryan Clemens, squatting in the manner of a baseball catcher, dipped a 3-inch nylon paint brush into a can of Frazee Paint. Duratec II, 100-percent Acrylic Exterior Flat White it said on the label.

Clemens was applying a fresh coat of paint to the "L" on "LAS VEGAS," which is what it says on either side of the start-finish line at the 1.5-mile oval, just in case anybody at this weekend's NASCAR Sam's Town 300 and Kobalt Tools 400 forgets where he is.

Which, considering many in the crowd will have been drinking beer and Jack Daniel's since the track opened for practice, might serve as a welcome reminder.

Up on the 9-degree banking, Mike Fees, bent over like an umpire dusting home plate, dipped another 3-inch nylon paint brush into another gallon of Acrylic Exterior Flat White. Fees was touching up the "V" in "LAS VEGAS."

This is when it was suggested they swap gallon cans, so they could become the first to trade paint on NASCAR week in Las Vegas.

Because they are not race fans, per se, Clemens and Fees did not see this suggestion coming out of Turn 4. They simply smiled, dipped their brushes back into their cans and went about their work in painstaking fashion. They continued to paint by letters, careful not to brush outside the lines.

Had the frontstretch been a coloring book, they would have received gold stars. If Kyle Busch drove as tidily as these guys painted, you almost could throw away the yellow flag.

Clemens and Fees work for Larger Than Life Inc., a local signage and mural company that also does the ring graphics at mixed martial arts events. They were part of a six-man crew that was painting the logos of LVMS and those of its many sponsors on the walls and track.

It was a job that mostly would have been done by Tuesday, had the typhoon not hit.

"Paint was flying everywhere," said David Ozuna, who was sporting a larger-than-life graphic of a Kodiak bear on the back of his jacket, recalling the hood of Rusty Wallace's old No. 27 Kodiak Pontiac.

So this would explain the new camouflage paint schemes on those A-10 Thunderbolts and F-16 Fighting Falcons across Las Vegas Boulevard North at Nellis Air Force Base.

Ozuna told me the job normally takes about a week. And unlike Michelangelo, one can't knock off early at the Sistine Chapel of Speed. The Larger Than Life crew is on call all weekend.

When somebody does a victory burnout or hits the wall, leaving behind tire marks and paint smudges and bravado, it means more work for the track painters. Or, as Ozuna, who used to climb 100 feet into the air to paint billboards on the freeway before that business mostly went digital and vinyl, puts it another way:

"Cha-ching!"

They do not paint over the graffiti on the walls. So vandalism enthusiasts Reggie Lehman from Ohio, Pam who expressed undying affection for No. 14 Tony Stewart in bold Magic Marker and the Jimmie Johnson hater who spelled the five-time series champion's first name with a "Y" and "BLOWS" with an "E" before the "S" can rest a little easier, though the authorities have been alerted.

If you are wondering how the track painters get that Lowe's logo on the track looking just like the one on Jimmie Johnson's business card, it all begins with a template, just like a Sprint Cup or Nationwide Series car. The logo is projected onto a thin tin wall and outlined on paper with a perforating tool. Then chalk powder is dusted across the perforation to reveal lettering that is 10 feet tall. Some of these logo templates stretch 100 feet or longer.

Ozuna was showing me how it all works when a gust of leftover wind sent the top half of the Kobalt Tools template skittering down the track toward Turn 1.

Ryan Clemens still was in his crouch, applying Acrylic Exterior Flat White to the first "S" in "LAS VEGAS."

Mike Fees still was bent at the waist like Harry Wendelstedt, touching up the second "S" with flat white -- and only flat white, because glossy white might reflect the sun and lead to a wreck, which would bring out the yellow flag. And some of these races already are too long as it is.

They were working about 3 feet from the finish line, the distance by which some races are won and lost.

As I watched them load another dollop of Duratec II, 100 percent Acrylic Exterior Flat White paint onto their brushes, two thoughts came to mind, the first of which was that these guys were working within 3 feet of where history will be made this weekend.

The second was that I should be careful not to step on those letters, because they still looked wet.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ron Kantowski can be reached at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow him on Twitter: @ronkantowski.