ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, January 6, 1996 TAG: 9601100027
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: AUTO RACING
SOURCE: BOB ZELLER
Even in the quirky world of NASCAR racing, it seems ludicrous that anyone would spend millions of dollars to buy something they don't want in order to obtain something they can't own.
But that is precisely what happened on Dec.28 when New Hampshire International Speedway owner Bob Bahre, an old-fashioned, frank-talking Yankee businessman, purchased 50 percent of North Wilkesboro Speedway for an undisclosed sum from the family of its founder, Enoch Staley, who died last year.
``I don't want it,'' Bahre said in a telephone interview Friday from his home in Maine. ``I have no interest in running it. I just bought it for the Winston Cup date.''
He was reminded that he can't buy the date because NASCAR owns the dates. Beyond 1996, for which the contracts are already signed, NASCAR doesn't have to give him anything.
``You're absolutely right,'' Bahre said. ``They don't have to.''
But Bahre said he has talked to NASCAR President Bill France about it.
``He didn't say yes, but he didn't say no,'' Bahre said. ``And when Billy doesn't say no, that's pretty damn good.''
Now fathom this. Once Bahre gains control of one of North Wilkesboro's two Winston Cup race dates (assuming that happens), he is willing to sell his half-share of the track back to the Staley family, or to someone else, at a fraction of what he paid for it.
``I'll give 'em a hell of a deal,'' Bahre said.
And so it goes in the business of America's fastest growing sport.
Bruton Smith, the owner of the Charlotte and Atlanta speedways, already owns the other half of North Wilkesboro, having bought it soon after Staley died because Smith needs the track's other date for his new Texas track.
The only problem is that both Smith and Bahre want to move this year's fall North Wilkesboro race to their tracks. Smith expects to have Texas ready by the Sept.29 race date. And Bahre wants to start reaping the financial reward of his investment as soon as possible.
``In all honesty, I don't know how that will work out,'' Bahre said. ``I called Bruton, but I haven't heard from him. We haven't resolved anything, but we're going to have to resolve it somehow. I'd love to have the race [in New Hampshire] this fall if I can get it. He can run an April race in Texas, when we can't here'' because of the weather.
Smith could not be reached for comment Friday.
It is not clear who will gain what in this landmark change of track ownership. But what is clear is that the losers, yet again, will be loyal fans.
They filled that little speedway year after year. They filled every new seat that old Enoch Staley added in the last years of his life. But a full stadium wasn't good enough to keep the Browns in Cleveland, and it isn't good enough to keep a Winston Cup race in North Wilkesboro.
Many thousands of North Wilkesboro spectators were locals. The races gave Wilkes County a strong sense of local identity and status in the stock car-loving South. But there were also hundreds of dedicated out-of-towners who swore there was no better place to see a stock car race, especially in the fall.
Among them were Mike Flanagan from Virginia Beach, a sports copy editor at the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot, and his cousin, Richard Williams, a water department supervisor for the city of Lenoir, N.C.
If the sky was clear on the September Sunday of the Holly Farms 400 at North Wilkesboro Speedway, and it usually was, Flanagan and Williams could see 150 miles of the Blue Ridge mountains from their top-row seats overlooking the first turn.
It was one of the simple pleasures at NASCAR's oldest and smallest track, along with the fried bologna sandwiches at the mom-and-pop food stands outside the track and the sense that moonshine was still being distilled up in the woods just around the next bend in Windy Gap Road.
There is a certain charm at North Wilkesboro that never can be duplicated anywhere else. As Flanagan puts it: ``North Wilkesboro is the Fenway Park of NASCAR.''
For Flanagan and Williams, however, there probably never will be a fall Sunday of Winston Cup racing to watch from Row 30 between sections F and G in the grandstands at North Wilkesboro Speedway again.
Business intervened on the road of tradition, and North Wilkesboro fell into the hands of men who did not want the plain, old-fashioned princess for her charm, but only for the jewels she wore.
LENGTH: Medium: 83 linesby CNB