DATE: Wednesday, April 9, 1997              TAG: 9704090653

SECTION: SPORTS                  PAGE: C2   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY BOB ZELLER, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:   74 lines

OWNER RISES TO DEFENSE OF NEW TEXAS RACE TRACK DRIVERS' CRITICISM FOLLOWING THE INTERSTATE BATTERIES 500 WILL BRING NO CHANGES, SMITH SAYS.

Memo from Bruton Smith to NASCAR drivers: I'm not accepting any criticism about the track at Texas Motor Speedway, thank you. And see you in Texas again soon.

Smith, chairman of Speedway Motorsports, which owns the new facility, on Tuesday aggressively and at times combatively defended the new Texas speedway. He said he had no plans to do any major reconstruction, even as criticism continued in the wake of a metal-crunching inaugural Interstate Batteries 500.

Car owner Richard Childress, usually a diplomat in NASCAR debates, said Smith's design was 47 years behind the times, and called for major changes.

Said Smith: ``What we've built here is the greatest speedway in the world, as far as I'm concerned, and I will defend that to the heavens. I'm not going to take one criticism.

``I've had some people come to me and say we've built the eighth wonder of the world,'' he said. ``We spent an awful lot of money, we've built a great speedway, and we'll defend it any way we have to.''

Smith, speaking on the weekly Winston Cup teleconference, said the rain in Texas Thursday and Friday ``certainly affected the race because our drivers did not get the chance to get out there and learn their way around the speedway.

``They didn't get a chance to get their chassises set up for it.''

Smith dismissed Rusty Wallace's comment that the track needed to be rebuilt, saying the remark was made in the heat of the moment following an accident. ``I always hate to see a microphone stuck in a driver's face as soon as they get out of a race car,'' he said.

``Right now, we're not going to change the speedway other than we're going to profile the track to make sure the contractor did not make an error at all. We'll look at it at two-foot increments to see if there are any problems, but we don't see one.''

If there is a problem, Smith said, ``we're not talking about anything major at all.''

Childress, and many others, saw a major problem.

``It's a one-groove race track,'' he said. ``Darlington is a one-groove race track. They built Darlington in 1949-50. This is the 1990s. It needs to be redone to 1990s standards, where you can run two or three wide through the turns.''

Childress said Smith needs to build the track like the new speedway at Las Vegas, which he said ``is one of the finest race tracks we've ever raced on.

``Texas has got 95 percent of everything positive; they just need to work on the race track,'' he said. ``I think they need to change the banking, just change the design and engineering to get away from the Charlotte-type trioval and go to a Michigan style, or fix it like Las Vegas. If I built a new race track for the '90s, I would build something that wasn't a one-groove race track.''

But Smith said there's nothing wrong with a one-groove track.

``We're not building an interstate highway,'' he said. ``We're building something to put on a fabulous event. It's got to be. . . . we've got to have the rubbing. I don't want to see people destroy a race car. I don't want to see anybody get hurt. But it's entertainment. We've got to entertain the fans.''

He compared Texas to his short track at Bristol, where the Winston Cup series goes this weekend. ``There's no other venue in the world that has got as many people on the waiting list for tickets as Bristol,'' he said.

And Smith rejected the notion of getting input from drivers. ``If you did that, you'd never get a speedway built,'' he said. ``If you went to 40 drivers, you'd get 40 opinions.''

On another front, Smith said he hopes his bid to buy North Carolina Motor Speedway will be accepted today during a board meeting at the track. Smith said his bid is 60 percent better than one from Roger Penske and Penske Speedways. Bids will be considered today. ILLUSTRATION: Photo

``What we've built here is the greatest speedway in the world, as

far as I'm concerned,'' said Bruton Smith.

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