Winds of change blowing at New Hampshire track

When the dust -- make that the snow -- finally settles on the change of ownership at what soon will be known as New Hampshire Motor Speedway, the outlook for that facility appears as bright as the white stuff now blanketing it.

So says Jerry Gappens, who will be running the place.

Lowe's Motor Speedway

Jerry Gappens

Brushing off rumors that Bruton Smith agreed to buy what heretofore has been named New Hampshire International Speedway from founder and long-time owner Bob Bahre for $340 million last November simply to move one of the facility's two race dates, Gappens said flatly that he does not expect that to happen.

Not now. Not ever, or at least not in the foreseeable future.

Otherwise, Gappens would not have accepted Smith's offer to become executive vice president and general manager at the New Hampshire track. He begins his new job full-time on Jan. 7. The transaction between Smith and Bahre becomes official Jan. 11, when the real-estate deal closes.

Gappens, 46, is taking the job after spending 15 years working for Smith, chairman and chief executive officer of Speedway Motorsports Inc., at Lowe's Motor Speedway, SMI's flagship operation in Charlotte, N.C. Gappens most recently served as senior vice president of events and marketing at LMS, where the weather is quite a bit different than what Gappens experienced during his first three visits to his new land of employment.

"The first time there was no snow. The second time it snowed about five inches between breakfast and lunch. The third time we got 14 inches and had to stay over an extra night because of it," said Gappens, laughing.

"But I grew up in Indiana and used to work in New Jersey, so I'm not afraid of a little winter weather. I'll just have to make sure I'm driving something with four-wheel drive."

Smith, who owns a number of car dealerships, no doubt can hook him up.

Questions and answers

Gappens knows Smith about as well as anyone, but even he admitted that he wondered at first about widespread speculation that Smith was buying the New Hampshire track simply to move one of its two race dates to another SMI track in Las Vegas. So when Smith made the offer to have Gappens run the New Hampshire facility, Gappens first had a couple questions that he desired to be answered.

"I had two questions to ask him before we talked about the job or salary or anything else. The first one was: what are your plans to upgrade it to SMI facility standards? His reply was that he already had engineers and architects in that very morning to start discussing what could be done. In typical Bruton fashion -- he could have built Rome in three days -- he already was on that. This was a Monday morning and he had just announced the purchase of the track that previous Friday, before the race in Texas," Gappens said.

"My second question was: what do you plan to do with the dates? That's when he related to me the story about after going up there and seeing the facility and talking with Bob Bahre when they did their deal that they had a great fan base, they were selling out their races, it was a profitable, successful operation. And if it's not broke, don't try to fix it. And his words were, 'I would have a tough time justifying right now moving any dates from there.'"

Gappens said he was relieved, but not surprised, at Smith's answers. (Continued)