Smith: 'No plans' to move race from N.H. to Vegas

FORT WORTH, Texas -- Bruton Smith danced around the question with all the dexterity of a Las Vegas showgirl.

"Do you realize they have 140,000 hotel rooms in Las Vegas?" the flamboyant chairman of track conglomerate Speedway Motorsports Inc. boomed to his audience. "In about another 18 months, they'll be up to 175,000. That's more hotel rooms than any other city in the world, even today."

Bet on it!

Bruton Smith says he doesn't plan on moving a race to Vegas from New Hampshire but Joe Menzer says the sale doesn't make sense unless he does.

• Complete story, click here

That's all well and good, but the query poised to Smith on Friday at Texas Motor Speedway didn't concern hotel construction. It was about whether the car salesman turned racetrack magnate would move a second Nextel Cup date out to the desert, now that he's struck an agreement to buy the 1-mile facility in Loudon, N.H. Smith, who added race dates to his Fort Worth track by purchasing venues in North Wilkesboro and Rockingham, N.C., paid $340 million to buy the renamed New Hampshire Motor Speedway, giving SMI a seventh NASCAR track and two more coveted spots on the series schedule.

And what to do with those dates? Keep them in New Hampshire, where the track has sold out every Cup race since it debuted on the schedule in 1993, and drew 101,000 fans to watch Clint Bowyer's victory on Sept. 16? Or move one to Las Vegas, Smith's pet project, a place where he's spent millions overhauling the garage area and the racetrack, a 142,000-seat edifice sitting to the east of the glittering lights of the Strip?

"I have no plans to move anything or do anything," Smith said. "We're just into this thing one week. All of our plans certainly are not in place. But it will take some time. Right now we have no plans of moving anything."

But later? It's still early in the process; the sale won't even close until the first quarter of next season, and Smith -- who struck the deal with former owner Bob Bahre only last week, and had to disclose financial terms because SMI is a public company -- said any assumptions as to what he'll do with the property are premature. But Chris Powell, general manager of Las Vegas Motor Speedway, clearly wants another date to complement the one his track currently hosts in March.

"I think there's more of an opening now than we've ever had," said Powell, who attended Friday's announcement at Texas. "That is not to say anything negative about New Hampshire Motor Speedway and the great job that's been done up there for years. I use to work at R.J. Reynolds, went up to New Hampshire every year, and enjoyed every trip I made. Lake Winnipesaukee is one of the most beautiful places on earth. But at the same time, Bruton has made a big investment in our speedway, and the best way to get a return on that investment is to do more business."

Known until Friday as New Hampshire International Speedway -- "motor" was added to conform to the names of SMI's other oval holdings -- the flat track in Loudon was one of the last remaining independent venues on the Nextel Cup schedule, nestled in a New England region with deep short-track roots. It's close to Boston, one of the large Northeastern cities that NASCAR has worked to make inroads in, and holds a prominent place as the first stop in the Chase. (Continued)