It's off to Vegas this week, baby, as we dig in to the fascinating backstory of two short-lived racetracks that lived fast and died hard trying to bring top-flight motorsports to Sin City in the late 1960s and early 1980s - with all the over-the-top theatrics, gambling connotations and underworld intrigue you'd expect from the "Entertainment Capital of the World."

Racing writer Randy Cannon ("Stardust International Raceway: Motorsports Meets the Mob in Vegas"; and "Caesars Palace Grand Prix: Las Vegas, Organized Crime and the Pinnacle of Motorsport") takes us behind the scenes of two of the city's most ambitious auto racing facilities - each designed to attract high-rolling visitors to both the tracks and the tables, long before it was kosher for sports and gaming to coexist.