The past year has been a very busy year for Bruton Smith and Speedway Motorsports Inc (SMI). Proving that Smith is probably the only person who can actually stand up to the France family and not bow down to kiss the ring of Sir Brian.
His first venture was blackmailing the city of Concord, N.C. to build a NHRA drag strip. When they refused due to a noise ordinance, he threatened to build a new track and leave Lowes Motor Speedway as an ancient ruin of one of the meccas of this sports history. It would sit there much like the Colosseum in Rome, empty, but full of history of great races and one of the birthplaces of the sport. Lucky for us, the fans, Concord realized that this history and that this speedway are both critical to their economy and NASCAR.
The next venture was purchasing New Hampshire International Speedway (NHIS). Now it’s been stated by numerous sources that this is a move to take one of their dates and move it to one of his other tracks, Las Vegas Motor Speedway. That is a move that will more than likely take place in the 2009 season. The big question is, what is going to happen to NHIS in general. Is SMI going to pump money into the track to make it better, or is he going to eventually build a new track somewhere else in the country and take that final date from NHIS? Non-the-less, it is showing Smith flexing and now cowering in the corner.
The latest chapter in the SMI ventures is the fight to get the final race of the season back to Atlanta Motor Speedway (AMS). This was the last race of the year for many years and was a great draw, but weather made NASCAR want to swap the races with Homstead-Miami Speedway (HMS). But Smith argues that this was an experiment, and he contends that it is a failed experiment. Now that the Chase has been implemented in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series, the fact that AMS seats 124,000 people vs. HMS seating only 80,000, it only makes sense that the final race of the year returns to its rightful home. Let’s see what the Frances have to say about that, since that move would give an SMI owned track the final race in the chase while currently International Speedway Corporation (ISC) owns that privilege. ISC as many of you know, is primarily owned by the France Family.
Once again this shows that Smith is not afraid to speak his mind and go for what he wants. Let’s see how this all shakes out. I for one would love to have the final race back in Atlanta, having spent many times at that race over the years. One thing for sure, Smith knows how to run a track and he knows how to make his tracks things of beauty.
Chris Smith is a contributing editor at RubbingsRacing.com
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March 5th, 2008 at 1:57 pm
[…] I just finished writing an article on SportsPage Atlanta. Here is a small excerpt of that article. The past year has been a very busy year for Bruton Smith and Speedway Motorsports Inc (SMI). Proving that Smith is probably the only person who can actually stand up to the France family and not bow down to kiss the ring of Sir Brian….click here to read the entire article. […]
March 6th, 2008 at 7:27 am
The latest I read regarding Bruton Smith was he was pushing the idea to swap the fall race dates of California Speedway and Atlanta Motorspeedway. His reason for proposing the swap was that he felt California Speedway was having attendance problems due to the hot weather around Labor Day weekend. I am surprised that he would want to do this as Atlanta is host to one of the Chase races and he would lose that to his ISC rivals with the swap. Currently, ISC has 5 tracks to Bruton’s 4 in hosting the Chase races. Yes, it would be fun to have the Labor Day race weekend in Atlanta but this doesn’t sound like a power move on Bruton’s part.