Kentucky Speedway appeal not on upcoming court calendar

By Bob Pockrass - Associate Editor

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

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The appeal filed by the original owners of Kentucky Speedway in their antitrust suit against NASCAR is not on the official hearing calendar for the U.S. Court of Appeals in Cincinnati for the week of June 8-12.

The two-week session runs from June 8-19, and the official calendar for each week is released two weeks in advance. Typically, hearings are set at least a month in advance, and no date has been listed on the docket for the Kentucky appeal to be heard. A case can be added to the calendar at any time, but it is highly unlikely a complex case such as Kentucky-NASCAR would be added at the last minute.

After an appeal hearing, a decision can come from three weeks to six months later.

Speedway Motorsports Inc., which bought Kentucky Speedway last December, needs the appeal to be heard and decided as soon as possible if it wants to move a Sprint Cup race to the track in 2010. NASCAR officials have said they won’t consider a realignment request for a Sprint Cup race to be moved to Kentucky until the case is resolved. The founders of the track have said they won’t drop the appeal.

The original ownership group, which spent $152 million to build the track, claims that sanctioning body NASCAR, owned by the France family, and track operator ISC, whose majority of voting stock in the publicly traded company is owned by the France family, illegally conspires to keep independent tracks such as Kentucky Speedway from obtaining Cup dates.

NASCAR and ISC deny the claims in the suit, filed in 2005. SMI was later added as a co-conspirator. In January 2008, a U.S. District Court judge ruled there was not enough evidence for the case to go to trial and ruled in favor of NASCAR and ISC. Kentucky Speedway’s former owners have appealed that decision, which awaits a hearing date.

If Kentucky Speedway wins the appeal, the case would return to district court for trial.

SMI Chairman Bruton Smith has not said which SMI track would lose a Cup date to move a race to Kentucky