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Smith not saying which SMI track could lose date to Kentucky
By Bob Pockrass - Associate Editor
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Rusty Jarrett
Getty Images for NASCAR
Speedway Motorsports Inc. Chairman Bruton Smith knows where he wants to move a Sprint Cup date from if that’s what it takes for him to get a Cup race at Kentucky Speedway.
Smith said Monday that his decision was made, but he wouldn’t reveal it. In the last several years, NASCAR has allowed SMI and track-operating rival International Speedway Corp. to ask for Cup dates to be moved among the tracks in their corporations.
SMI currently has two Cup dates at Texas, Charlotte, New Hampshire, Bristol and Atlanta and one at Las Vegas and one at Infineon
Raceway.
“We have not made any announcement where that [Cup date] would come from because that would create a problem for us if I said we would take it [before we can],” he said. “We’ve pretty well figured it out. We have options. But I don’t think [ISC in] Daytona will give up a race.”
Saturday, Smith attended his first race at Kentucky Speedway, which he has an agreement to purchase by the end of August. Smith said he is handling the sanctioning negotiations for the track for 2009 and has no plans to back out of the agreement on the $78.3 million deal, which includes an assumption of $63.3 million of debt.
While NASCAR officials have flatly stated that there will be no Cup race at Kentucky in 2009, Smith said he hoped NASCAR would be flexible with him. Smith can’t make a request to move a Cup date, obviously, until he actually owns the track.
Smith reiterated that the key would be for the current Kentucky Speedway ownership group to settle or drop its federal antitrust lawsuit
against NASCAR and sister company ISC.
“NASCAR, a few years ago, gave us the freedom of moving an event from one speedway to the next,” Smith said. “If the lawsuit could go away today, I think I would stand a pretty good chance of getting one there in ’09. … We’re in a wait-and-see.
“I am not arguing [with] NASCAR. I would like to see them maybe cooperate and maybe be flexible.”
As far as his plans for the track, Smith confirmed he would redesign the massive garage area.
“I will duplicate what we did in Vegas – we’ll create another Neon Garage there,” Smith said. “NASCAR hasn’t said, but that must be a nightmare for them to try to control what’s going on in those garages. They’re so far apart you need to call a cab to go over to the next one. That’s one thing I saw that I want to do.”
The Kentucky track, currently a 1.5-mile oval with 14-degree banking in the turns also could have work done to it.
“We’re not there yet,” Smith said. “We’re studying it, but we’re just not there. There are some major things we want to do.”
The Nationwide Series race Saturday was a sellout of the track’s 66,000 seats, and standing-room only tickets were sold on the day of the race. There were small pockets of empty bleachers for the race, but it once again was a strong crowd (announced at 73,000) with a Cup race weekend going on in Michigan that was about a five-hour drive away.
The Kentucky track is located 40 miles from Cincinnati (33rd media market), 60 miles from Louisville (48th media market) and 80 miles from Lexington (64th).
“It’s just proof that that is a real hotbed of racing and spoke highly of NASCAR,” Smith said. “Here we had standing-room only and a record crowd for a Nationwide race, and the [Cincinnati] baseball team is playing the Boston Red Sox in town. … I know that speedway is great for the sport. It’s great for NASCAR.
“To me, it’s like another Bristol. It has the same feeling as Bristol. Now if we were looking today and talking about Bristol, everybody would say, ‘Oh, no, you don’t want to go there.’ But look at Bristol, today.”
Smith, who has been at times been critical of NASCAR’s new car, said he didn’t mind NASCAR encouraging the drivers to give the new car more time to develop before criticizing it.
“Once we give them some more leeway, they will make this car better than it is,” Smith said. “Somewhere deep down, they’re looking
forward to that. I was kind of proud of [NASCAR President] Mike [Helton] with his meeting up there Friday of ‘Shut up and race’ – maybe it’s time that that’s happened.
“Go back to work and try to solve the problems we have with the car. We have a lot of brainpower in that garage area, and that can be done, but it needs more testing and gradually they will learn.”
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Comments
1 response to "Smith not saying which SMI track could lose date to Kentucky".
Michelle Bray said:
Jun 19, 2008 at 9:17 AMI just have a feeling that this may be taking the same road as the Champ and Indy Car fiasco. If two strong, very wealthy entities start to quarrel and each fights to add or delete tracks and races then there is going to be a split. I hope that this does not happen and that Nascar can step in to keep both sides in one family