1on1: Clay Campbell (cont'd)

Q: Do you find that events, such as Dale Earnhardt Jr. winning a race, or a couple drivers getting into a brawl somewhere else on the circuit, spike your ticket sales?

Campbell: Yeah, absolutely it does. Obviously, the momentum we found at Daytona, which was probably the most positive Speedweeks I've seen in a long time, everybody who followed Daytona tried to build on and follow that momentum.

Sure, selfishly, I would have liked to have seen a big brawl -- or somebody get out of their car and go after someone else. I think close, on-track racing, first and foremost excites people, because that's what this whole sport is built on -- competitive racing.

So you want to see good racing, and it would have suited me fine if either at Atlanta or Bristol somebody had gotten out of their car and just beaten somebody up, or gotten emotional. That gains attention and people like to see that, they like to follow it.

You know, we need rivalries. We used to have big rivalries in this sport: Petty, Pearson and Yarborough, and things like that. So that's good, you need that and I like NASCAR's thinking, now, that we need to let them show some of their emotions.

Q: Jimmie Johnson and Jeff Gordon went at it last spring at Martinsville, with Jimmie winning by a few feet. To your mind, how much better would it have been if Jeff would have spun Jimmie out?

Campbell: Well, it would have probably sold us some tickets for the next one -- so yeah, stuff like that is what the fans love; and a close race, no matter who wins it, enhances the future.

Q: Martinsville is a community-oriented facility, so what's going on with the July Fourth celebration that you've held, in the past, at the racetrack?

Campbell: This will be our 10th year of hosting that. It started, actually, with Henry County doing it for years at the administration building; but you can't put but so many people into something like that -- and that was just fireworks, it wasn't a show.

Then we had two local industries that celebrated their 75th anniversaries, and they wanted to do something special, and they did it at our track. Well, after that we realized it was a pretty good deal for the people of Martinsville and Henry County, so we put the thing on with funding from numerous local industries.

It's gone over really well. It's a free concert for the community, it doesn't cost anybody a penny, we have top-name entertainment, a half-hour fireworks show and amusement rides for the kids.

We're a good corporate citizen and it's just something that we can give back to the community in which we all reside; because a lot of those people have a lot to do with our race weekends; so it's a pretty neat deal that we can give something back, like that.