On the gaming strip their names are up in lights and surrounded by all the pomp and circumstance reserved for internationally known superstars. It's obvious that this place, Las Vegas, belongs to Elvis Presley, Wayne Newton and the like.

But over yonder, about 20 miles north on Interstate 15, the very mention of this 23-year-old's name fetches the cheers reserved for America's sporting superstars. It's obvious this place, Las Vegas, also belongs to Kurt Busch -- the hometown kid who is making stock car fans of the people in this gambling town.

	Kurt Busch has raced his way to third-place in the Winston Cup standings.

Busch, a second-year Winston Cup driver, has returned home to Las Vegas, where he will start third in Sunday's UAW-DaimlerChrystler 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. And to him, nothing would be better -- not even Daytona -- than winning here in front of his fans.

"Winning at Daytona is one thing, but I think winning at a race track where you spent 21 years of your life growing up would mean a lot," Busch said. "Not many people are from Las Vegas, so it would be the ultimate win."

Most folks you see at the casinos, doubling down at 5 a.m. and holding their breath hoping for a face card, are out-of-towners who migrated west to mine for gold. The locals have their own communities on the outskirts of the city. And it is there, written on the windows of the taverns and spelled out on the signs at gas stations, that Las Vegas pledges its support for Busch, who grew up here -- not unlike the rest of these locals -- unfamiliar with NASCAR.

Busch never dreamed of winning the Daytona 500 or a Winston Cup title. He always wished that one day he might play baseball, perhaps even for his favorite team -- the Chicago Cubs.

"When I was going through junior high and getting ready for high school, I was going to try out for the baseball team my freshman year," said Busch, who played little league ball for nine years.

But that all changed when ninth grade arrived and his father, a lifelong racing fan who used to live in Milwaukee, brought home a chassis -- the outer shell of the three-ton machines you'll see racing at Las Vegas on Sunday.

When he saw that, Busch -- who had a go-kart ever since he was five, but only drove it around his neighborhood cul-de-sac -- fell in love.

"We built it and took it from the ground up," he said. "He showed me everything about it and then from then on we were in the shop every night after school was over and I had finished my homework. We would go in there and just play around and tinker and that's how it developed."

From there, Busch started racing dwarf cars and hobby stocks. In 1995, he won the Nevada Dwarf Car championship and in 1996, the year Las Vegas Motor Speedway was built, he won the Hobby Stock championship there, too.

	“	I think fans are coming out here now and becoming NASCAR fans. That's really cool, because it wasn't like that growing up.”
		—Busch

He started racing stock cars in the NASCAR Southwest Tour in 1999 and won that series' title. By this time, Jack Roush, a successful Winston Cup team owner, had heard of the kid and invited him, along with a score of other aspiring drivers, to try out for his Truck ride.

"We knew right away that he was our guy," Roush said. "He handled the truck really well and it was just really obvious that he knew what he was doing."

And so began his climb up the NASCAR ladder. In 2001, he made a rookie bid in Winston Cup. It was a solid start for a rookie, but overshadowed by Kevin Harvick's rookie season that saw him win the Busch title while finishing ninth in the Winston Cup standings.

In the off season, Mark Martin, a veteran driver who is part of Roush Racing's five-car stable, made a suggestion that may just catapult this season from solid to fantastic for Busch. Martin brought Busch's young crew chief, Ben Leslie, to his team to complement his experience. He sent his experienced crew chief, Jimmy Fennig, to Busch's team to complement Busch's youth.

The move appears to have worked out well for Busch. Through two races, he is third in the standings -- just 35 points out of the lead.

"I was over at the race shop on Monday and everybody was running around on cloud nine," Busch said. "It's fantastic and we look at 12th place this past weekend as being a bad finish for us. When you start looking at 12th place as being a bad finish, you know you've got something moving in the right direction and that's the confidence Jimmy Fennig puts in me and all the people around him."

And with Busch's rise has come a rise in interest in stock car racing out here in the outskirts of Vegas. In the early 1980s, Busch remembers that racers would come out here and hold events. He remembers hearing that even Martin and the late Alan Kulwicki came out.

But the interest in those events were marginal at best. Nothing compared to what has happened since the track was born, and so too was a star for the locals to pull for.

"I think fans are coming out here now and becoming NASCAR fans," Busch said. "That's really cool, because it wasn't like that growing up. I think it's great. And I'm really proud if I can be a part of that."

Rupen Fofaria is a beat writer for the Raleigh News & Observer.