Expect a second race in Las Vegas with sale of NHIS

Viva Las Vegas, baby!

Strip away all the smoke and mirrors and backroom handshakes and that's what Bruton Smith's latest acquisition adventure is all about: gaining a second Sprint Cup date for Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

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And good for him. Vegas, the land of smoke and mirrors and backroom handshakes, has long been overdue for a second Cup date -- even if it comes at the expense of one of two well-attended dates at New Hampshire International Speedway in Loudon, N.H. It would have been better if perhaps one of the dates from, say, California Speedway represented the collateral damage instead. But anything will do.

Smith has scheduled a news conference for 12:30 p.m. ET on Friday at Texas Motor Speedway, where he has hinted about making a "big" announcement. Sources confirmed in Thursday's Boston Globe that Smith, CEO and chairman of Speedway Motorsports Inc., intends to announce that he has entered into an agreement to purchase NHIS from Bob Bahre, the track's 80-year-old chairman.

Bahre is one of the last independent track owner/operators in NASCAR, part of a long but suddenly not-so-slowly dying breed, and has struck deals with Smith previously.

That Friday's public announcement of their latest collaboration was scheduled at Texas Motor Speedway was no coincidence. Nothing much with Smith ever is.

Smith acquired his first Cup date for the Texas track -- and Bahre his second for NHIS -- after they partnered in 1996 and bought North Wilkesboro (N.C.) Speedway. They promptly shut down North Wilkesboro and split that track's two Cup dates after receiving the blessing of NASCAR's governing body.

Smith's SMI empire already included not only the tracks in Texas and Vegas, but also Lowe's Motor Speedway in Concord, N.C, just outside of Charlotte; Infineon Raceway in Sonoma, Calif.; Atlanta Motor Speedway; and Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway. All but Vegas and Infineon, a road course, currently host two Cup events per year.

All race dates and race locations must ultimately be approved by NASCAR, of course. And the schedule is already set for 2008. It was recently released by NASCAR, which has signed agreements with current tracks for all 36 races next season -- and a schedule that looks virtually identical to this year's (the only exception being a July race at Chicagoland Speedway that has been moved from Sunday afternoon to Saturday night).

So the second date in Vegas won't appear overnight.

But if Smith doesn't already have tacit approval to buy NHIS and move one of that venue's two dates to Vegas, which he probably does, you can bet that he has a team of able lawyers ready to sue so that he can have a second race date just down the road from the strip by 2009.

Prior to the running of the UAW-DaimlerChrysler 400 at Vegas earlier this year, Smith suggested that it would be wonderful to hold the season's final race there each season -- and then have everyone in NASCAR stick around for the annual awards banquet. Again, not a bad idea.

Just as with the current setup with the end-of-year awards banquet being staged in New York City, two Cup events didn't quite fit in the way they are presently framed at Loudon. (Continued)