ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, May 12, 1996 TAG: 9605140005
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BOB ZELLER STAFF WRITER
If you were NASCAR President Bill France and you had to pick a moment when everything seemed right with your frenetically growing world, then May 5 probably was as good as any.
It was three hours before the green flag fell on the Save Mart 300. The sun was blazing in a cloudless sky, the temperature was perfect and another record crowd of more than 100,000 was inching through the front gates at Sears Point International Raceway in Sonoma, Calif.
These were Northern Californians, mind you. One can understand a crowd of this size in sports-minded, automotive-oriented, free-wheeling Southern California. But this was Northern California.
And 12 short years ago, it was Southern California that could muster only enough interest to send a measly 32,000 through the gates for a race at now-defunct Riverside. How things have changed in NASCAR.
Now, in the heart of wine country, they pack them in shoulder-to-shoulder for a NASCAR race where most spectators can't even see the entire track.
At the media center, there is another ESPN news release announcing a record television rating for the NASCAR race at Talladega. On Wall Street, the prices for auto racing stocks are as strong as ever.
And France, the most powerful man in stock car racing, is thinking how nice that dinner he had the previous night in San Francisco was.
``You talk about the growth of the sport, I'm glad you mentioned that,'' he says. ``Fifteen years ago, we wouldn't have had that over there.''
Wouldn't have had ... ?
``That damn good abalone I had over there yesterday,'' France says. ``Better than those old hot dogs we used to have.''
O. Bruton Smith, the second most powerful man in stock car racing, is edging toward billionairedom as the stock in his Speedway Motorsports, Inc., skyrockets. He had a similar reaction when he was asked if there was anything that showed he'd really made it big in the world of business.
``Oh, yeah,`` he quickly replies. ``I get invited to breakfast now. I mean, I'm talking about with the silver and everything. I'd been to Wall Street many times and I'd been invited by some major brokerage houses, but I'd never met the president of the New York Stock Exchange.
``And for him to have a special breakfast for me, it makes you feel like you're somebody. It seems like `country boy makes good.'''
Smith is 69. France is 63. Both have been in the sport all their lives.
And in the final quarters of their careers, they are seeing stock car racing explode beyond anyone's wildest imagination.
``There's been a tremendous amount of change in the last 10 years, but look at the last two or three,'' says Kevin Triplett, a NASCAR spokesman. ``My job is only remotely similar to what it was 21/2 years ago.
``Now, when a driver does something on the race track, I don't get 20 letters, I get 40. We're already breaking TV ratings records again this year.
``But it's so much more. Now we're helping promote cafes and NASCAR Thunder stores and speed parks and NASCAR Online. We've started a whole new truck series. We've added the Brickyard [400].
``And one thing begets the other. One Sports Illustrated cover leads to another. Simon and Schuster has got a guy on the circuit this year. Other books are appearing. And TV shows. The number of foreign correspondents on our regular mailing list has increased dramatically. Everybody you talk to seems to have something in the works or an iron in the fire.''
``I mean, look, Dave Marcis with a computer company on the side of his car?'' says Michael Kranefuss, a Winston Cup car owner. ``And the amount of people who come to the shops every day, never mind during the summer when people come from Washington and Oregon and Idaho to spend a week touring NASCAR country.
``It's stuff I would have never believed would have existed.''
Some of the truck drivers and crew members still talk about the Sunday night drive back from Watkins Glen, N.Y., last year. Two or three hours south of the Glen, somewhere in Pennsylvania, the trucks began encountering spectators along the side of the road and on the overpasses, some with banners, some in their lawn chairs, cheering them through.
``They were just greeting a bunch of trucks and watching them well into the night,'' Kranefuss says.
Growth brings many questions
``I tell you, I don't envy France's position,'' says Bill Davis, a Winston Cup car owner. ``This is what you want and it's where you want to be. You want to have the fastest-growing sport. But that brings on a lot of problems. There's a lot of things to worry about and work on.''
There are the issues of the more distant future, such as whether the teams should be franchised or whether two major stock car racing circuits should be created from the Winston Cup series. And France is predictably noncommittal about those.
But the issue of the year - the one that has been getting all of the attention - is the schedule for 1997 and beyond. How will NASCAR expand? What will happen to North Wilkesboro? Will NASCAR give the new Texas Motor Speedway a second race? Are other short tracks doomed? Will France break up the conglomeration of races in the mid-South?
What will happen to the schedule?
This is the question on the table, and France is warming to it during an interview in a private mobile lounge in the garage at Sears Point.
Suddenly, the door opens and Dale Earnhardt marches in, bringing with him the smells from the grill outside where gourmet chefs from San Francisco are catering another luncheon for the seven-time Winston Cup points champion and his team.
Earnhardt flops on a couch and looks at the reporter. ``What are you beatin' on him for?'' he asks.
Only Earnhardt has the nerve to interrupt a private meeting involving Bill France. But he knows how much France admires him, and he knows he can get away with it. He's NASCAR's biggest star.
``He's talking about the growth of the sport,'' France says.
Earnhardt has something to say about that, and it cuts directly to the issue of the schedule.
``I'll say this: We do need to go to those major cities and get out of some places where we're at,'' Earnhardt says. ``We don't need five race tracks within a two-hour drive. We need to take two of those out, at least, and go to California and Vegas and St.Louis and Texas or wherever, and go to the major markets. Because that's where our growth is going to be.''
France is asked if he agrees.
``Yeah, to a point,'' he says.
Earnhardt interrupts.
``Emmitt Smith [Dallas Cowboys running back] and I were on `Oprah' together,'' he says. ``Now he knows about that race track down there, but he don't understand NASCAR. He knows about me, but he don't know about Ted Musgrave. But if he knows about that race track, and if we go to that race track in that major city, it's going to bring us more recognition. We need the bigger arenas.''
``And that's coming,'' France says. ``Things will probably work out that way evolution-wise, but we don't have any set number. And I don't think that the size of the track per se - the fact that Martinsville is a half-mile track and something else is a mile track or a two-mile track - that in itself is not a dividing line about who's going to stay on the schedule and who's not going to stay on it.
``It's not the size of the facility. It depends on how tracks keep up with increased costs. It's going to cost more. But the marketplace is going to determine all of that in the end.''
France's statement seems to bode well for a track like North Carolina Speedway at Rockingham, which seems more dispensable in light of its proximity to Charlotte and Darlington, but less so given the almost frantic series of improvements made there in the past three years.
It doesn't bode as well for Pocono, the 2.5-mile track in Long Pond, Pa., which has two races in a span of five weeks and has been slower to make capital improvements.
But can a two-event track survive with one Winston Cup event?
``The big problem that everybody has is the capital costs required to keep the facilities growing,'' France says. ``You still have to pay for these facilities. You have to repave them from time to time and you have to make necessary improvements.
``That's what you get into,'' he says. ``This is one reason we're trying to get the Busch series going where it will be a better series as far as financially successful. And we're hoping the truck series will develop into something like that so that they can replace [a Winston Cup date] with something. You want it to be just as good as if you had two [Cup] races.''
A major financial player
But let's not wring our hands too vigorously for the suffering track owners.
For one thing, Watkins Glen, Phoenix, New Hampshire and Sears Point all seem to be doing just fine, thank you, with one Winston Cup event each. And as Don Hawk, Dale Earnhardt's business manager, points out: ``I think we're seeing lately how strong track owners are, because track owners are the ones buying up all the tracks.''
Smith, Wall Street's darling of late, has generated so much money from his Speedway Motorsports stock offering that he may have to look outside the sport to find enough places to spend it.
``We do have lots of money now, so we're all set here to do whatever we want to do,'' he says. ``I've seen times when we weren't in that position. Right now, we're in great shape,.
``I think there's other things we can do. We might do something outside stock car racing.''
More big, new tracks?
``I would never say never. I can't speak to that today. But it is a good question,'' he says. ``I see a lot of things I want to do. We will be doing something. I promise you, we will be doing something.''
Smith has the bases covered so thoroughly, he has the local governments in Texas issuing bonds to pay for Texas Motor Speedway, but he doesn't really need the revenue.
``We haven't done the bond issue,'' he says. ``What I'm doing, I'm going ahead and financing it. But I'm 99 percent sure we'll do the bond issue. But we won't do it this year. We'll do it next year. And fortunately, we've got a lot of great, great, big Wall Street companies that want to do them.''
Smith sees his move to take his company, Speedway Motorsports, Inc., public on the New York Stock Exchange, as a key component in the growth of the sport.
``I did not realize what an effect it would have on our sport by going to Wall Street,'' he says, ``because no one had ever taken our sport to Wall Street.''
Smith seems to relish the give-and-take with reporters during an impromptu news conference in the middle of the Goody's 500 at Martinsville Speedway.
``What that did, that awakened some media giants like Forbes and Fortune and the Wall Street Journal,'' Smith says. ``We had six major stories in the Wall Street Journal. We awakened the financial world by doing this.''
As the owner of the tracks at Charlotte, Atlanta, Bristol, soon-to-be-Texas and half-owner of North Wilkesboro, Smith is beholden to France for Winston Cup dates. But France, as the chairman of International Speedway Corp., also is a track owner.
It presents a potential conflict of interest.
But both men dismiss it.
What direction are we going?
Still, there is a sense France and Smith are a bit wary of each other, even after decades of working together, and that whatever tension exists between them has been heightened by the current growth explosion.
For instance, when France is asked what pitfalls lie in the road ahead for the sport, one thing he says is, ``We want to see more revenue come in, but it needs to come in, hopefully, at a level where the people who are receiving it are going to be smart enough to spend it properly.
``You read about the guy who drives a truck and hits the lottery. The question is, when he gets all that new-found money he never had before, will he be smart enough to spend it wisely?''
Now who could France have been talking about?
For his part, Smith is plenty outspoken when asked whether France's great 1997 adventure, a November exhibition race in Japan, is a wise move.
``No, sir,'' he says. ``I don't see where it's gonna ... it does expose our sport ... But will it do anything beyond that, I don't know. I don't see any Japanese companies out here, do you?
``I think it would have been great to expose our sport in Europe. These sponsors do well in Europe, where there aren't so many barriers like there are in Japan to all of our companies.''
Power and money can do strange things to people, but Smith is adamant about his desire to work with France, not against him.
Would he like to run NASCAR?
``No, no sir,'' he says. ``I have no desire whatsoever. None. NASCAR is there. No sir. Absolutely not. I'm very supportive of NASCAR. I've made that very plain.''
That's probably of some comfort to France, who has enough problems because of all the good things happening in the sport. He doesn't need any enemies plotting a palace coup.
For instance, he faces the growing problem of driver accessibility. On Sundays before the race, you hardly see some of them. They're all holed up in the lounges of their transporters. And the bigger the star, the less accessible.
``We were talking yesterday about how we've got to try to keep these guys accessible to the fans and the public,'' France says. ``And still recognize that when they stick their head out of the back of the truck over there, they're descended on by the corporate guests that are in here.
``But you can't get rid of the corporate guests. That goes along with the total marketing program of the companies that sponsor the cars.''
But all in all, doesn't the stupendous growth make a businessman feel good?
``That part is nice,'' France says. ``But when you're working in it every day, it hasn't made life any easier. It ain't as much fun as it used to be.''
LENGTH: Long : 246 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: File. 1. Dale Earnhardt believes NASCAR still has roomby CNBto expand and gain popularity. ``We do need to go to those major
cities and get out of some places where we're at,'' Earnhardt said.
``We don't need five race tracks within a two-hour drive. We need to
take two of those out, at least, and go to California and Vegas and
St.Louis and Texas or wherever, and go to the major markets.'' 2.
(headshot) Smith. KEYWORDS: AUTO RACING