Smith still pursuing 2009 Cup race at Kentucky
By Bob Pockrass - Associate Editor
Thursday, June 19, 2008
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SCENE ON THE CIRCUIT
Bruton Smith still believes that Kentucky Speedway can land a Sprint Cup race on the 2009 schedule, despite a NASCAR official’s recent declaration that will not happen.
To land a date, however, Smith believes the track’s current ownership group must settle its federal antitrust lawsuit against NASCAR.
Smith, chairman and CEO of Speed-way Motorsports Inc., paid his first visit to a Kentucky Speedway race weekend June 14 when he attended a Nationwide Series race at the track, which SMI has agreed to purchase in a $78.3 million deal scheduled to close in the next few months.
“We would love to have a Cup race here next year, of course I’m talking to NASCAR almost on a daily basis,” Smith said. “NASCAR, they’re concerned about the lawsuit, which we’re not involved in [in] any shape or form. … If the lawsuit, if the present owners seek to change that, our chance of getting the event next year would go up greatly and I think we could get that done.”
But the present ownership group, headed by Jerry Carroll, say that’s not going to happen. And NASCAR officials also have said that even if the lawsuit is dropped, Kentucky won’t be on the 2009 schedule.
“We are well down the road and hope to announce the schedule in the very near term,” NASCAR spokesman Ramsey Poston said. “There will not be a NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race [at Kentucky] in 2009.”
But Smith said June 16 he already knows which track he would pull a Cup race from to put one in Kentucky and he would like NASCAR to remain flexible throughout the sanctioning negotiation process. He currently has two races each at Atlanta, Bristol, New Hampshire, Texas and Charlotte. Smith would not reveal which track would lose a Cup event.
“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.”
The antitrust lawsuit, filed in 2005, claims NASCAR and sister company International Speedway Corp. conspire illegally to keep independent tracks such as Kentucky Speedway from getting a Cup race. NASCAR and ISC have denied those claims and won the case on summary judgment, a decision that is currently being appealed. If Carroll’s group wins its appeal, then the case will be scheduled for trial.
“We’re not budging from the lawsuit,” Carroll said. “He bought it knowing the lawsuit was in place. That was mentioned many times. We didn’t really anticipate anything happening [with Cup] in 2009. We just thought it was going to be another deal where he could work his magic and work something. NASCAR does what they do.”
And what if Smith told Carroll that the track wouldn’t get a Cup date if Carroll didn’t drop the lawsuit?
“That’s his problem,” Carroll said. “We’re not going to not have the lawsuit. It’s the only opportunity that we have – and we said why we went out to get the lawsuit [was] to create an even playing field.
“If we left now that somebody came in, it wouldn’t be fair to all the time we spent on this thing.”
Smith, who is handling Kentucky’s 2009 sanction negotiations with NASCAR, still has two months before finalizing the purchase of the track. He indicated that he will go ahead with the purchase. He said he is just going through the governmental regulations and expects the deal to close once he gets approval. Both Carroll and Smith said they don’t expect the issue of the lawsuit to cloud whether the purchase is completed.
Carroll also said SMI’s pending purchase of the track is not contingent on having a Cup race in 2009.
“As far as our state and myself – 2009, 2010, we’re going to get it,” Carroll said. “That’s the key thing. As long as we get it, that’s what’s important. We were always thinking 2010 and then when he had the press conference in Charlotte, he said 2009 he was going to put one in there next year.
“That was the first time I heard it. I think he still thinks he has a crack at it. He doesn’t back away.”
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