Speedway Motorsports’ Bruton Smith mum on possible 2011 Cup realignment
SMI Chairman Bruton Smith sidestepped questions about the 2011 Sprint Cup schedule. // Archive, NASCAR Illustrated
LOUDON, N.H. – Speedway Motorsports Inc. has not asked NASCAR to move a 2011 Sprint Cup date to Kentucky Speedway, nor has it asked for a Cup date to be moved from New Hampshire Motor Speedway, according to SMI Chairman Bruton Smith.
Smith sidestepped several questions about what the 2011 Cup schedule will be like at his race tracks. He currently has two Cup points races at Charlotte, Bristol, Texas, New Hampshire and Atlanta while he has one Cup date at Las Vegas and Infineon. There is no Cup date at Kentucky.
NASCAR typically works on the upcoming year’s schedules in May and June with the hope of releasing them by Labor Day. It has historically allowed track operators to request realignment of dates within their track portfolios.
“Whatever we do, we’ll announce it in the future,” Smith said Friday at New Hampshire. “We’re not announcing anything today. … We have not met [with NASCAR] about that yet. We’ve had no meetings about the schedule for next year.”
Smith can request NASCAR to realign a race to Kentucky now that an antitrust lawsuit brought by the track’s original founders ended in late May with NASCAR prevailing. NASCAR had refused to consider a realignment request until that case was resolved.
“I’d hate to put off until next year what we ought to be doing this year,” Smith said. “There was a lawsuit up there; that lawsuit finally went away. But that did slow us down a bit. … It did slow us down, but we’re going to accelerate now.”
Smith has said he wants to add 50,000 seats to the 69,000-seat Kentucky facility.
“We would have liked to have that [suit] to have ended months and months earlier; it would have provided us a chance to make some plans but it did deter our plans some,” Smith said.
When asked if he would need to resurface the track because of weeper issues at the 1.5-mile track, which included a canceled Indy Racing League test one day after it rained at the track in April, Smith responded: “Weepers, what weepers? That’s old. We’re through with those.”
Smith also was repeatedly asked about whether he would move a Cup race from New Hampshire because of a rift with the police chief over the bill to provide protective services at the track. The current bill is $170,000 and Smith wants it down to $65,000 and then hire a private security firm.
“We’ve turned that over to the attorneys,” Smith said. “We’ll let them handle that.”
But could it cost New Hampshire a Cup date? Smith said the track has tremendous support. He wouldn’t answer questions about whether moving a race out of the Northeast television market to a smaller market would be a smart move or whether his lawyers have been directed to threaten pulling a race out of the market over the police bill.
“We will talk to NASCAR about all these things,” Smith said. “We like to do what’s good for the sport.”
