Kentucky Speedway likely closer to 2011 Cup date with founders’ dispute settled
RICHMOND, Va. – Kentucky Speedway’s prospects of getting a Sprint Cup race in 2011 improved Friday as former co-owner Richard Duchossois dropped his lawsuit against former co-owner Jerry Carroll.
Duchossois sued Carroll over the right to continue the Kentucky Speedway founders’ antitrust litigation against NASCAR. Carroll didn’t want to continue pursuing the case, while Duchossois wanted to consider requesting the Supreme Court to hear an appeal. A May 7 trial had been scheduled in the battle between the founders, but a filing in the case Friday indicated both sides had settled.
It was not immediately clear if there definitely won’t be a request for an appeal to be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court, but it seems unlikely Carroll would have settled without a guarantee from Duchossois that there will be no more appeals.
The deadline to request for the Supreme Court to hear the antitrust case is May 19, and if the request is filed, the court likely will not decide whether to hear an appeal until October at the earliest. With NASCAR’s long-standing policy that it won’t consider moving a Cup date to Kentucky until the antitrust litigation is completely resolved, the filing of a request to the U.S. Supreme Court likely would keep Kentucky off the 2011 Cup schedule.
But without a request, track owner Bruton Smith should be able to realign a race from one of his other Speedway Motorsports tracks to Kentucky. He hasn’t said which track would lose a race, but he currently has two races at Atlanta, Bristol, New Hampshire, Charlotte and Texas. It seems unlikely that popular tracks Bristol, Charlotte or Texas would lose a race. Atlanta has struggled the most to sell tickets.
Kentucky Speedway, a 1.5-mile track located about 25 miles south of Cincinnati, opened in 2000 at a cost of $152 million. It was sold to Smith’s Speedway Motorsports Inc. in a $78.3 million deal completed in December 2008.
While the track was sold to SMI, the Kentucky Speedway founders retained the right to continue the lawsuit, which was filed in 2005 and alleged that NASCAR and International Speedway Corp. illegally work together to keep independent tracks from getting Cup events. Both the U.S. District Court and U.S. Court of Appeals have determined that there is not enough evidence for the case to go to trial.
If the Supreme Court were to rule in favor of the founders, the case would then revert back to district court for a trial.
Kentucky Speedway’s founders filed the suit seeking more than $200 million in damages and asking for the France family, which controls both NASCAR and ISC, to sell NASCAR and/or most of its tracks and for new criteria to be created for awarding Sprint Cup race dates.
