If you were watching the race on TV Saturday night, it looked like Texas Motor Speedway had a really great crowd. In fact, the Speedway reported a crowd of 168,400. That’s nearly one and a half times the capacity of Cowboys Stadium. A heck of crowd – if it stood up to scrutiny. The grandstands [...]
Posts Tagged ‘Speedway Motorsports’
Hey, Nice Crowd (Sort Of)
April 11th, 2011 
Journo Loudon Getting ‘Concorded’ By Bruton Smith
June 21st, 2010 Journo Concord (verb) – when a race track/auto dealership magnate threatens a municipality with the removal of a race event, or entire racetrack, in order to get what he wants – refers to what happened to the city of Concord, N.C. Last week Bruton Smith took his fight with the police chief of Loudon, N.H. public. [...]
Bruton Smith…Makes Sense?
March 11th, 2010 Journo Say what you want about Bruton Smith, you can’t accuse the guy of not speaking his mind. And you can bet when there are eager reporters around him the gospel according to Bruton is about to be preached. Though it might have gotten lost in the noise about Carl Edwards and Brad Keselowski, Smith took [...]
What Is Going On At SMI?
April 10th, 2009 Journo The headline should perhaps read “What is going on at Sonic Financial?” From falsified SEC filings to executives lying about their credentials, the empire of O. Bruton Smith is on shaky ground. Chalk it up to the recession or mismanagement, there is a lot of troubling things going on at the company. It seems every [...]
NASCAR Media, Where Are You? No Marcus Smith Stories?
March 19th, 2009 T.C. So I don’t know how many of you have seen this, but apparently Marcus Smith (you know, son of Bruton Smith and President of Lowes Motor Speedway) might not have actually graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. This story appeared yesterday from Bloomberg and cites a University official. The story was a bit [...]
Kentucky, Really?
February 20th, 2009 Journo Bruton Smith amped up his Kentucky Speedway rhetoric this week, with the help of Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear, as they announced plans for a $75 million expansion (with help from the state) to aid them in their quest for a Sprint Cup Series date. And why not? Kentucky is a great facility. The mile and a half, 68,000 [...]
The Tarnished Gem
October 9th, 2008 Journo In 1959 Curtis Turner and O. Bruton Smith set out to seperately construct a large speedway in the Charlotte area. After a lengthy battle, the two agreed to join together to build what is today Lowe’s Motor Speedway. Turner was forced out of the company in 1961 and Smith in 1962. For the next 9 years Turner worked [...]
The NASCAR Week That Was: August 2-9
August 9th, 2008 Journo Road course racing is back again as the NASCAR Sprint Cup series and Nationwide Series travels to Watkins Glen International. From rain tires, to the re-emergence of the lawsuit facing NASCAR, this week produced interesting storylines. Hall of Fame Racing, which started just a couple of seasons ago with such promise is grasping to stay afloat, booting JJ [...]
Posted in NASCAR Week That Was 
Tags: Bruton Smith, DEI, diversity, ESPN, J.J. Yeley, Mauricia Grant, media, media ethics, NASCAR, SMI, Speedway Motorsports 
No Comments »The NASCAR Duopoly
May 29th, 2008 Journo This past week track mogul Bruton Smith announced the acquisition of Kentucky Speedway, upping his company Speedway Motorsports’ total track count to seven (six of which host Sprint cup races currently). When combined with the tracks owned by the France family under International Speedway Corporation, they now control 86% of Sprint Cup Series tracks and [...]
The Best Characters in NASCAR
May 12th, 2008 Journo No I’m not talking about a driver or drivers, but Ollen “Bruton” Smith and Howard “Humpy” Wheeler. These two men embody what is left of old NASCAR and bridge the gap to all that is new. They do it with authority and class and very often give us a lot to talk about. I thought [...]
Posted in NASCAR History Tags: Bruton Smith, Humpy Wheeler, Lowes Motor Speedway, NASCAR, Speedway Motorsports No Comments »