NASCAR All-Star Race moving to Texas?
Sure, Charlotte officials might complain, but that market has three major NASCAR Cup events, and it doesn’t sell out all its seats. Logical business would be to cut a race, and make the remaining seats more valuable.
So track owner Bruton Smith could well take one of those Texas Cup weekends and move it to his newly purchased Kentucky Speedway, and then move the May All-Star race from Lowe’s Motor Speedway down to Texas.
Certainly something has to shake out if Smith is to maximize his investment in the Cincinnati area track.
The NASCAR Frances, on the other hand, are looking for Cup date to move to their own Kansas City track, now that they’ve got the okay for a Hard Rock Casino at that speedway.
And whenever the stock car tour comes to tiny Martinsville Speedway, where the race day traffic madness is expected when the full 86,000 seats are filled, the inevitable question is how much longer can Clay Campbell, who grandfather built this place, hold on to his two Cup dates.
At least two more years, it would seem, with Sunday’s announcement that GlaxoSmithKline’s Tums/Goodys division will sponsor Cup races here in 2009 and 2010.
Dale Earnhardt Jr., on Martinsville: “There is something about this place…it has a lot of history. But so did Darlington, and it didn’t stand the test of time, as far as two Cup dates.
“There will be a day when I think this track probably will lose a date. But it is unfortunate.
“We still see some of the most exciting racing of the year at Richmond. And you don’t have a problem ever selling out Bristol, where you do at probably 80 percent of the other tracks.
“Somebody really needs to wake up and see what is going on: Get some more short tracks back in this series.
“A couple years back they really latched on to something unique when they ground the bottom groove, and you had a second groove that was actually preferable. There was a lot of side-by-side racing, even the ability to pass on the second groove.
“They don’t have that now, once they fixed the surface. It is back to really just getting around the bottom the best you can.
“So this track lacks some of the characteristics that keeps it from becoming a Bristol or a Richmond.
“Even with that said, it is still fun to race here. It is a short track, and it would really be unfortunate for the sport to move another short track date from the series, because we haven’t added short track races in a long time."
A second Cup weekend in Kansas City suits Clint Bowyer just fine. Of course he’s from Kansas.
“Well, hell yeah, that’s a fun place to be," Bowyer says of KC. “The Hard Rock…everything is going to be there.
“I like having fun. Do you like going to a place where there’s nothing to do when you’re done at the race track? Where there’s not a good place to eat, not any kind of entertainment….and you just go back to the hotel and do your notes?" Winston Salem Journal