THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, February 17, 1996 TAG: 9602160692
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C8 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: A Guide to Nascar '96
SOURCE: BY BOB ZELLER, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 98 lines
Out on the windy Texas plains 15 minutes north of Fort Worth, a piece of the puzzle that is the future of American motorsports is being shaped and graded.
This is Texas Motor Speedway, and when Eddie Gossage, the track's general manager, gives his slide show to the folks in Texas, their favorite image is the computerized graphic that shows eight Texas Stadiums inside the speedway.
This is big. Texans like big.
But the 1.5-mile, 160,000-seat, fully lighted speedway is only one element of promoter extraordinaire Bruton Smith's plan for the future of the sport. And Smith, the chairman of Speedway Motorsports Inc., is only one player among many as American motorsports hurtles toward the 21st century amidst tremendous growth:
California Speedway is expected to be finished next year, replacing long-gone Riverside and Ontario, California tracks that disappeared as NASCAR took off on its current growth spurt. It is being built by Roger Penske, who has started selling stock in his speedway company.
NASCAR is taking its show on the road to Japan in November with the intent of demonstrating to the Japanese that there is something interesting, after all, about big American cars and V-8 engines.
Smith, who went public with Speedway Motorsports last year, in January purchased Bristol International Raceway, which he probably won't tamper with because Bristol already is a cash cow.
Last year, Smith and New Hampshire International Speedway owner Bob Bahre each separately purchased 50 percent of North Wilkesboro Speedway, NASCAR's oldest Winston Cup track. They want the two Winston Cup dates - Bahre for New Hampshire and Smith for Texas.
In open-wheel racing, the demand for growth led to the creation of the Indy Racing League, an oval-track series for Indy cars to fill the gap left by the largely road-racing-oriented CART series. Unfortunately, the expansion has ignited a needless, ego-driven war between the two series.
But there's nothing that symbolizes the new and varied economic forces in motorsports quite like Texas Motor Speedway.
The big earth movers have been speeding around the 1,000 acres of track property since August, moving some 4 million cubic yards of dirt to shape the track, the infield and the high-banked turns. Actually, Texas will be a dual-banked track, with a 24 degree outer turn for stock cars and an 8-degree inner turn for Indy cars.
Smith, 68, who built Charlotte Motor Speedway in 1960, has pointed out on many an occasions how different it is to build a track now. There are many more obstacles to leap and many more governmental hoops to jump through.
``It was, in a sense, less of a challenge than it is now,'' he said. ``We were too young to know we couldn't do it.''
But in Fort Worth, Smith's track is part of a massive, fast-rising mega-industrial park known as the Alliance development. The developer is H. Ross Perot, Jr. Clearly, Smith has good connections.
And it helps if you don't have to pay the construction bill.This is not pointed out in track press materials, but Texas taxpayers are footing most of the $107 million cost of building the speedway.
The city and county governments created quite a deal for Smith. In addition to floating bond issues to build the track, they declared the speedway land exempt from property taxes. The city and county own the track, but Speedway Motorsports will get a 100-year lease and will pay $8 million a year in rent.
This arrangement has some local taxpayers furious, despite whatever economic benefits the track might bring. They've taken to picketing and protesting local speedway functions.
``Our school district has to pay $200,000 a year to pay the (bond issue) off, and we're turning in Campbell's soup labels to buy computers for our classrooms,'' said James Maloney, a local resident. ``And I'm a racing fan.''
What's more, this entire project is being built with no guarantee of any race as of yet.
``This is genuinely a `build it and they'll come' track,'' says Gossage.
But nobody expects a project of this magnitude not to get races for both Indy cars and NASCAR stock cars, and Smith has all but guaranteed one Winston Cup date with his North Wilkesboro purchase.
Smith goes back to the 1950s with stock-car racing. Throughout his long career, he has been involved in many businesses, including auto dealerships, insurance companies, a failed savings and loan, various development projects and, of course, speedways.
Now it appears that the speedway business may be the most lucrative of all, and Smith is moving with his characteristic aggressiveness.
His purchase of Bristol sent a jolt through the sport. With everything else that had happened in 1995, it made fans wonder what was next.
But on Wall Street, the purchase was greeted with hearty approval. In the two days after the Jan. 22 sale, Speedway Motorsports stock rose more than 3 1/2 points. It's now selling at around $31 a share - a whopping 58 percent increase from the $18 price when first issued last year.
The sport is rolling on all fronts. There will be winners, losers, and more dramatic shifts and turns. Somehow, as the season begins, the 1996 schedule remains essentially the same as it was 10 years ago. But it is just a matter of time before that, too, is overhauled. by CNB