THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, January 7, 1996 TAG: 9601070187
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C13 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY BOB ZELLER, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 85 lines
Even in the quirky world of NASCAR racing, it seems ludicrous that anyone would spend millions of dollars to buy something he doesn't want to obtain something he cannot 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 May.
``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.''
Bahre was reminded that he can't buy the date because NASCAR owns the dates. Beyond 1996, for which the contracts already are 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 Jr.
``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 a facility he is building near Fort Worth, Texas.
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 the Texas speedway 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.
It is not yet 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 funky 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 cousins Mike Flanagan of Virginia Beach, a copy editor with The Virginian-Pilot, and 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, they could see 150 miles of the Blue Ridge mountains from their top-row seats overlooking turns 1 and 2.
It was one of the simple pleasures at NASCAR's oldest 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.
There is a certain charm at North Wilkesboro that can never be duplicated anywhere else. As Flanagan puts it: ``North Wilkesboro is the Fenway Park of NASCAR.''
For Flanagan and Williams, however, there will probably never again be a fall Sunday of Winston Cup racing to watch from Row 30 in Section F at North Wilkesboro Speedway.
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. by CNB