When Jerry Carroll, the man who turned cornfields into a racetrack in the foothills of Gallatin County Kentucky, failed in every which way—including suing NASCAR and the France family—to get a Cup date at his track, he turned to Bruton Smith, Chairman and CEO of Speedway Motorsports Inc., to save him.
Smith purchased Kentucky from Carroll and promised fans in the Bluegrass State that NASCAR’s big stars would one day drive around the track. It was the same promise Carroll made in 1999, but this message had some backing to it. Smith actually could make it happen, whereas Carroll just wished it would.
“With the belief that we have a market and we were building in the right place, yes I would do it again with that in mind. I believe we had the right market, I believe we had the right track, and I believe we did everything right,” Carroll told Bob Pockrass of SceneDaily.com late in 2009. “But in retrospect of understanding the difficulty of getting a race, I would not do it again.
A panoramic view of Kentucky during the June 1st test at the track
“If you’re an entrepreneurial person, you never want to try to win something on merits and doing it real good and realizing later on that you never had a chance. We never, ever had a chance. Call us a little bit naïve when we got in, but we’re risk takers. That’s what makes this world go round.”
And in the NASCAR world, if it’s not the France family that makes the world go around, it’s certainly Bruton Smith.
Earlier this week Smith lambasted the Kentucky government for the horrible conditions of the stretch of I-71 that leads into his newest track. He even went so far as to say I-71 is, “the worst interstate highway that I have ever driven on in my life.”
May I remind you that Bruton Smith is 84 years old. He knows bad highways when he sees them.
His son, Marcus Smith, who holds the title of president and chief operating officer of SMI, showed up to the June 1st Goodyear tire test at Kentucky and proclaimed the same message that his father would have given had the elder Smith made it to Sparta that afternoon.
Marcus Smith (left) and Greg Biffle talk during a break in the Goodyear tire test at Kentucky on June 1st
“You can’t go to a manual somewhere, you can’t go to a class and figure out how to put on a party for 80,000 people. It just doesn’t happen. We haven’t written a book yet but maybe we should,” said Marcus Smith.
“When you put on an event this big, it’s bigger than the Super Bowl, it’s bigger than the Olympics even. And what we do in one place is really unlike anything else that happens in the world,” he added.
Bruton Smith even told Ken Broo of Cincinnati’s WLWT-Channel 5 that the residents of Kentucky don’t know what’s about to happen to them.
Race fans in Cincinnati who have traveled to other races in such places as Daytona, Indianapolis, Bristol and Talladega know and understand. But the average person in Cincinnati may not understand the passion race fans have for this sport.
“When you have a race it’s not just an event. It’s not just ‘When does the green flag drop?’ You really need to know when the whole weekend starts because it’s more than anything else, a festival,” Marcus Smith noted. “It’s an entire weekend plus for fans that come in from all over the country to enjoy this inaugural weekend here at Kentucky Speedway. And that’s what makes it a special thing because it’s so much more than a race.”
Greg Biffle, who won the inaugural Camping World (nee Craftsman) Truck Series race at Kentucky said the facility is “impressive.”
“Well the facility has always been very impressive, from the open, when they started it. It’s neat to see it coming to life with the added grandstand and all the other things going up around it,” Biffle said.
There’s no doubt that the party will be hopping in two weeks at Kentucky Speedway. It’s a triple-header weekend for NASCAR’s three biggest series and I’ll be there to cover it all both here and at FOX19.com. Keep checking back as the countdown roars toward raceday in Kentucky.
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