Bruton Smith downplays possibility of 2011 Sprint Cup race at Kentucky
For two years, Bruton Smith had indicted he was ready to move a Sprint Cup date to Kentucky Speedway.
But talking at the track Saturday prior to the Nationwide Series Meijer 300, the Speedway Motorsports Inc. chairman said he has not asked for a Cup date for the 1.5-mile facility for the 2011 season.
“I don’t think that it’s too late for things, it’s just that there’s so many things to be done, a lot of things we have to take into consideration before we make that decision,” Smith said during the news conference.
“Whatever we want to do, we have to coincide with NASCAR. We don’t want to upset anything. … We have to think about the time of year, we have to think about the weather, how does it affect the sport per se. And we’re taking a date from somewhere, what does that do? There are a lot of things you have to consider. It’s not real simple.”
NASCAR likely wouldn’t mind getting a request from Smith so that it can do two realignments for the 2011 Cup schedule. International Speedway Corp. has asked for a second Cup date to be moved to Kansas Speedway for 2011 but has not revealed which of its tracks would lose a date.
Smith hasn’t revealed which SMI track he would move a date from in order to have a Cup race at Kentucky. Of his tracks, Atlanta, New Hampshire and the Infineon Speedway road course seat the fewest spectators.
It has been three weeks since Smith could have requested realignment as the track founders’ antitrust lawsuit against NASCAR ended with NASCAR winning the legal battle. NASCAR officials had refused to consider realignment until the case came to a conclusion.
“We’re working diligently on that [Cup date] and we’ve been anxiously awaiting for this lawsuit to go away,” Smith said. “That took too long and had it been resolved many months ago, we would have your answer you’re looking for today. That has kind of slowed us down on the things we want to do and the things we need to report to NASCAR.”
Smith said his master plan for the track is to add 50,000 seats to bring its capacity to nearly 120,000. He also wants to replicate Las Vegas Speedway’s Neon Garage at the Kentucky track.
The track also has had an issue with weepers (groundwater seeping up through the racing surface), but Smith did not mention anything Saturday about repaving the track.
