NASCARS"S Bruton Smith, MY NEW HERO!!!
<HR style="COLOR: #72a5d8" SIZE=1><!-- / icon and title --><!-- message -->CONCORD N.C. -- If Bruton Smith ruled the motorsports world, taxpayers would help fund racetracks. More events would pay $1 million to win. It would always be 70 degrees and sunny in Canada, Europe would give up on road racing, and NASCAR would trade the bright lights of Broadway for the neon glitz of the Las Vegas Strip.
It wouldn't be dull, that much is certain.
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</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><!--endclickprintexclude-->Smith, the billionaire car dealer who runs Speedway Motorsports Inc., would reign over a kingdom where crashes are sometimes celebrated, drivers wouldn't be discouraged from duking it out, and 43rd-place finishers better not expect much of a check.
"Why do you want to pay somebody $70,000 or $80,000 because he finished 43rd?" Smith ranted Thursday during the preseason media tour hosted by his flagship facility, Lowe's Motor Speedway. "Those fans that buy the tickets, they don't care. What we've got to do is put the money up there and pay big money for winning. And then the fans get involved. They want to know who won."
He's perhaps the least-known powerful man in American motorsports, the portly, bald chairman of a seven-track empire, with a penchant for flamboyance and needling the NASCAR brass. He built what was then known as Charlotte Motor Speedway, and went broke because of it. He started in the automotive business as a floor salesman, and now has a net worth of $1.4 billion that ranks him 278th in the Fortune 400.
And he can't stand the sissified version of NASCAR that he sees today.
"Look at what helped build this sport," he proclaimed. "NASCAR is wrong in what they've been doing in the past. You push somebody, oh my goodness, it's $3,000. What happens if you slap the crap out of somebody? We used to have some great events after the events. Look at A.J. Foyt. He'd win the race, and then get out of his racecar and still whip you. I'm not saying it's going to be a free-for-all, but ... well ..."
He rails against municipalities -- his own included -- that will help fund new facilities for NBA or NFL teams, but won't give track owners a dime. He continues to fund his venues, some of the most well-appointed on the Nextel Cup circuit, out of his own pocket. He's installing stadium-style seats in the frontstretch grandstand at Lowe's. He's fixing the dip between Turns 1 and 2 at Texas. He's resurfacing Bristol after the upcoming March race.
Smith is spending $100 million to overhaul 10-year-old Las Vegas Motor Speedway, changing the banking to 20 degrees, moving the pit lane 150 feet closer to the grandstands, and upgrading the infield to include a fan plaza and a spa. But he wants something else in Las Vegas, too.
He wants the Nextel Cup awards banquet, a staple in New York since 1981. Stand back, and watch the sparks fly.
<!--startclickprintexclude--><TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=195 align=right border=0><TBODY><TR><TD width=10></TD><TD><TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=1 width=192 align=top bgColor=#ffffff border=0><TBODY><TR><TD style="PADDING-RIGHT: 5px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; PADDING-BOTTOM: 5px; PADDING-TOP: 5px" colSpan=2>"Let's get the flock out of town and let's go to Vegas, baby. Do it, and do it right. Vegas wants the awards banquet to be there. ... So viva Las Vegas."
- Bruton Smith


</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><!--endclickprintexclude-->"They've got 140,000 hotel rooms. All they need now is the banquet there," he said. "Let's get the flock out of town and let's go to Vegas, baby. Do it, and do it right. You don't have to worry about ice and snow and whether you can get there. I remember going up there a couple of years ago, and you couldn't even fly into New York because of the ice and snow. We had to land in Albany, N.Y., and then drive down to Manhattan, which is about two and a half hours. You don't have to worry about that in Vegas."
It's more than idle talk. The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported Dec. 13 that speedway general manager Chris Powell and the head of the city's convention and visitor's bureau had met with NASCAR marketing honco Mark Dyer on the issue. Smith believes NASCAR chairman Brian France can be convinced.
"Vegas wants the awards banquet to be there," Smith said. "We could put it in one of the facilities there with 15,000 people. NASCAR could sell tickets to it. There are so many advantages to doing this.
"Have I talked to Brian? Yes, I have. Repeatedly, and I think we're getting there. We're not there yet. But I think we're going to have to say we're going to Vegas, baby. So viva Las Vegas."
In Bruton's world, nothing is sacred. The Lowe's track tears up all kinds of racecars in the two years since it was smoothed and then repaved. It has the nickname "Beast of the Southeast" bestowed upon it. You want a track in Houston? Sorry, it rains too much. Want one in Canada? Sorry, it snows too much.
Want a NASCAR-style oval in Europe? Then drop this fascination with road racing, Smith says, and get with the program.
"What are you going to run on it? I did an interview with about three or four magazines from Europe one time, and they said, 'Why we can't we have one of these in Europe?' I said, 'Because you have a road-racing mentality,'" Smith lectured.
"It started before World War II. If people want to go racing, what do they do? They block off some highways. They've never gotten over that. So I think to ever build something over there, you're going to have a mental enema and get rid of all that, and then maybe somebody will decide to build a speedway over there."
Still, Smith said he nearly struck a deal to build a facility in Germany, but backed away from the $165 million project at the last minute. That's closer than he's ever come to building in the New York area, something he and top lieutenant Humpy Wheeler studied five years ago, before rival International Speedway Corp.'s hopes for a Staten Island track went belly-up.
"Tony Soprano lives near there," Smith said. "There are just things you need to do. I determined at that time that it would take us 10 years to do all the things you have to do up there in order to ever open that speedway. Ten years? You get a lesser sentence sometimes for murder. I just decided I didn't want to do it."
Mob bosses and Vegas showgirls, big money and bluster. What an interesting world Bruton Smith lives in. Too bad the rest of us are just visitors.