LAS VEGAS -- After entertaining the media for the better part of a half hour Saturday, Las Vegas Motor Speedway owner Bruton Smith aimed his considerable charm toward Gillian Zucker, the visiting president of California Speedway.

Despite the relative proximity of their racetracks -- roughly a three-hour drive -- the two had never met.

LVMS

Neon Garage

'New' Vegas ready

The Neon Garage, the centerpiece of Las Vegas Motor Speedway's multi-million-dollar renovation project, is ready for the track's annual Cup race.

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Within minutes, Smith was doing everything he could to woo Zucker in an attempt to get her to part with one of her facility's two race dates. He desperately wants another one for his Vegas track. Smith even rubbed her back and played with her hair before playfully offering to triple her salary on a five-year contract and a $50,000 shopping spree at Nieman Marcus.

"And that's just for openers," Smith joked.

Zucker, whose track is owned by the International Speedway Corporation that rivals Smith's own Speedway Motorsports Incorporated operation, laughed and replied: "I love where I work and what I'm doing. I appreciate it. But I will say you're wonderful for the sport and I can see why these guys [in the media] love to talk to you. You're interesting and fun."

Smith pressed on despite the rebuttal of his advances.

"It's Friday. Let's wait until Tuesday morning. That will give you plenty of time to go talk to the powers-that-be and let's come back and you present a deal to me," he implored.

"I'm not going to have a deal," she replied.

"But you might," Smith insisted.

"I'm not going to have a deal," the smiling and resilient Zucker added. "But I love what you've done with the place."

Indeed, Smith has done a whole lot with the place since buying Las Vegas Motor Speedway roughly seven years ago. His latest renovation, begun basically the day after last year's race was in the books and amazingly completed just prior to this year's event, cost an estimated $75 million.

The banking of the turns on the racetrack was increased from 12 degrees to 20, pit road was moved 275 feet closer to the grandstands, and a new fan-interactive garage area -- called The Neon Garage -- sprung up in the infield.

Smith knows that you must spend money to make money, especially in Vegas. But he hasn't been spending all this money with the idea that NASCAR will race in the desert only once a year forever.

"We need the other date here," Smith said. "The sport needs it. NASCAR needs it. And I think that should be the end of the argument, so now we just have to figure out how to do it."

Smith's contention is that everyone loves to come to Las Vegas. But he dismissed the idea that the only way he'll get a second date in Vegas is to move one of the events from one of his other racetracks. As chairman of SMI, he also owns Lowe's Motor Speedway in Charlotte, Atlanta Motor Speedway, Bristol Motor Speedway, Texas Motor Speedway and Infineon Raceway in California.

"We're not talking about moving anything that Speedway Motorsports has here," Smith said. "We'll have to be looking in some other areas, and we'll look diligently toward that. I'm not looking for NASCAR to expand the schedule to bring another date here. But here again, we in NASCAR look at this as being a super market. ... You're going to be surprised at the interest in this race this weekend. We're going to set a record [in attendance at the Busch race] Saturday. We're going to set a record [for the Nextel Cup race] Sunday.

"And you're going to say, 'What happened?' Well, what happened is Las Vegas. People love to come to Las Vegas. You cannot talk to a race fan or driver out there who does not want to come to Las Vegas. And your car owners and your sponsors, they're all the same. They all want to come to Las Vegas. So if the world is saying, let's go to Las Vegas -- then is it good for the sport? All of us in this business should think of that. And if it's good for the sport, let's do it."

Smith has long campaigned for NASCAR to move its end-of-the-year celebration banquet for points leaders and other awards winners from New York City to Las Vegas.

"Well, I think it's about 99 and four-one-hundreths percent for bringing it to Vegas," he said. "And of course, NASCAR and Nextel, I guess, will make that decision. But I don't know any other place in the world it ought to be, other than right here. No. 1, you've got 145,000 hotel rooms here, and they're great hotel rooms.

"You go to New York, which we've been going to for too long already. They don't appreciate us, they don't care if we do leave -- and I think we ought to leave on that note and come here where we're appreciated. ... We have a couple of places here where we could seat 16,000 people. So with all of the media and all of the participants, we could have everybody there -- including race fans who want to attend that momentous occasion that's going to happen right here in Las Vegas. So baby, let's go to Las Vegas."

In his perfect world -- which doesn't exist yet and may very well never exist -- Smith said he could envision running the final race of the Nextel Cup season in Vegas, and then having everyone stay over for the end-of-the-year banquet. It would be a party the likes of which no one would ever forget, he argued.

He insisted that giving Las Vegas Motor Speedway a second race date makes much more sense than recent pursuits by both ISC and his own SMI operation to acquire land and build racetracks in other markets, such as Seattle, New York or Denver.

"Those things are more wannabes than anything else," Smith said. "I don't want to be in Seattle or that Northwest area. I don't want to be there where it rains any time it wants to. I don't want to go there. Our sport is an outside sport, and we're subject to the elements.

"And I like the elements that we're subjected to right here. Number one, do you like the weather here? Don't you like this weather? It's fantastic."

Later, he turned to Zucker and asked what she thought of his idea to close the Cup season with a Vegas-style finish.

"So anyway, what do you think about us having the last race of the season right here? Wouldn't that be awesome? Would you come to it?," he said.

"The last race of the season? Here? Well, I like it in Miami [at Homestead]," Zucker said. "I didn't go there last year, though. I was in Mexico."

"Well, there must have been a reason," a smiling Smith responded. "If it had been here, you would have come."