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.

"I think that was important. I think sometimes the media -- and not just the media, but people in general -- like to speculate," Gappens said. "And Bruton Smith is very vocal and very positive about what he's done in Las Vegas. He's made some significant improvements and a large investment in capital out there, and he certainly feels that with that market and with the success that they've had that he deserves a second date out there. I don't think too many people dispute that.

"But the big piece of the puzzle that everyone is trying to figure out is where does that second date come from? I just think it's a little too convenient to say, well, New Hampshire's got a date in September that would lend itself neatly to realignment. I just think everybody got way ahead of themselves as far as speculation on any movement of dates."

No move imminent

Even as Bruton Smith was announcing the sale of NHIS to SMI, he said there are no plans to move one of the Loudon track's race dates to Las Vegas.

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In fact, Gappens argued, why in the heck would NASCAR want to move a date out of a facility that has sold out 26 consecutive races? Why would NASCAR want to move out of a market that is unique and important to them?

"I think if NASCAR really looked at the current schedule, the people of New England are certainly supporting both races," Gappens said. "There is not another NASCAR track within [several] states. So I don't know. If they ever get to looking at the schedule or realigning any of the dates, I would think New Hampshire would be on the safe side, or at least the justifiable side, of keeping two dates -- compared to some other facilities right now that are struggling to sell out their one or two races a year.

"I spent time [as a reporter] at National Speed Sport News there in New Jersey, so I understand the Northeast with the Modifieds and the weekly racing that takes place in Pennsylvania and up in New York, and Connecticut and so forth. And you look at some of our [Sprint Cup] drivers now, like Martin Truex Jr., and they came from racing up in that area."

Mission Impossible

Gappens was working with the legendary journalist and race announcer Chris Economaki when Bahre first embarked on construction of the New Hampshire facility.

"When I was working with Chris Economaki at Speed Sport News, we had gotten the story that Bob had bought Bryar Motorsports Park, which was a rundown road course that wasn't on anybody's radar, and that he was going to build a speedway there. And we thought, 'Wow. That's like Mission Impossible. Why would you do that without any guaranteed dates?' Gappens said.

"But he did it, and he really earned his way with NASCAR. He started with a Busch race and then got a Cup race and kept growing and bought the second date through the Staley family at North Wilkesboro [the track Bahre bought along with Smith and closed down in 1996], and has continued to build on it. You've got to give him credit for having that vision. He made money from being a contractor and being a land developer. He didn't need the headaches of building a speedway -- but he had a passion for it and he did it."

What Bahre did in New Hampshire, Gappens said, is similar to what Smith has done at a number of other SMI facilities. He said that Smith respects that, and doesn't want to tear down or siphon off from what Bahre has built up -- but rather that he wants to add to it. Gappens said that he has hit it off with Bahre, who will remain at the track as a consultant, and that he believes Bahre would not have sold to Smith if he thought Smith was making the purchase only to pilfer a race date for Las Vegas.

"I think Bob Bahre is looking at this place like a child that he has nurtured and taken all the way through college. Now it's time to send the child off on its own, where some others care for it and can help it go on to even greater things," Gappens said.

Besides, from a purely selfish standpoint, Gappens said there is no way he would have accepted his new position if he didn't believe Smith was planning to build up rather than tear down or take away from the place.

"I didn't take the job to give anything back," Gappens said. "I think it's my job to go up there and implement Bruton's vision for it -- and to make it bigger and better and move forward from there. For the people that are skeptical and uneasy about a change in ownership -- and people there aren't as familiar with Bruton Smith as they are in the Southeast or other parts of the country -- my message is give him a chance. You are going to like what he does.

"If you look at everything he's done, from building Charlotte [now Lowe's Motor Speedway] in 1960 to basically buying and rebuilding Atlanta, Bristol and Las Vegas, and building Texas up from the ground and making it, I think, the showplace of all American motorsports facilities, plus the fact that he owns some of the nicest car dealerships in the country, he's got a history of making things bigger and better with his vision."

That could include any number of improvements at New Hampshire, Gappens added.

"I'm in meetings not everyone is privy to, and I know he is working on some short-term plans to upgrade some things before the June race," Gappens said. "But he's also having his people working on a three- to five-year master plan, and he's looking at all options -- everything from track configuration, to expanded seating, to improving infrastructure, and what it's going to take to do all that.

"He took Bristol from 67,000 seats 12 years ago to 160,000 seats today. He's taken facilities and improved them, made them bigger and better."

Playing politics

Gappens admitted that the greatest obstacle to possibly expanding the New Hampshire track, which currently offers grandstand seating of 91,000, probably would be working with local and state government officials to vastly improve the road infrastructure leading into the facility. It's currently located nine miles from the nearest major Interstate exchange.

"You want fans to be able to get in and out in a timely fashion," he said.

But Gappens added that he already has seen positive signs of how that may very well occur.

"Fortunately, I think it speaks volumes for the sport of NASCAR when the announcement of the sale takes place on that Friday, Nov. 2, in Texas, and that afternoon the governor of New Hampshire is trying to get in touch with Bruton to congratulate him and welcome him to New Hampshire," Gappens said. "That wouldn't have happened five to 10 years ago. I don't think the governor of any state would have recognized the importance of NASCAR and what it meant.

"But Gov. [John] Lynch in New Hampshire did. He wants to have lunch with Bruton, and I think that will happen here within the next couple of weeks. I think local, state and even national government officials now recognize the importance and the value that a big event like a Sprint Cup Series race brings to their economy and to benefit them."

The New Hampshire presidential primaries are set for next Tuesday. Gappens, who said he has learned from the best race promoters in the business in Smith and Lowe's Motor Speedway track president Humpy Wheeler, said he already plans to play off that. He said he intends to offer the winner of both the Democratic and Republican primaries a chance to drive the pace car before the first two New Hampshire races he presides over, although he did acknowledge with a chuckle that they'll probably argue over which one drives first.

That's fine, Gappens added with a laugh, as long as the politicians realize what really matters in the state.

"Tuesday is a big race in New Hampshire from a political standpoint," Gappens said. "But the two biggest races in the state are coming up in June and September when NASCAR comes, and there are over 100,000 people at this facility."

He didn't have to add that the snow, as well as some of the doubt about the facility's future, should be long removed by then.