Is he joking? Is he serious? You don't know with Smith

CONCORD, N.C. -- Bruton Smith has a vision, of the most spectacular pre-race show at a racetrack renowned for them. He wants to take two small elephants, outfit them with remote-controlled parachutes, and drop them from an airplane. The pachyderms would float back to earth wearing roller skates, and upon landing would race one another around the 1.5-mile circumference of Lowe's Motor Speedway. The winner receives a bag of peanuts, and the adulation of 160,000 amazed spectators.

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"We haven't done that yet. We're working on it," Smith, the enigmatic, charismatic chairman of racetrack empire Speedway Motorsports Inc., said Thursday on the final leg of the sport's preseason media tour. "Finding a trainer, that's the problem."

Of course, he's not serious. Or is he? You're never quite sure with Smith, whose sometimes cryptic but always entertaining monologues leave you wondering what exactly is percolating inside the motorsport magnate's glabrous dome. He has enough money -- $1.4 billion, according to Forbes magazine -- to do anything, and has made a habit of proving his critics wrong. He lit a super speedway. He blew up part of a mountain to expand Bristol Motor Speedway. He circumvented NASCAR to get additional Cup dates. He built the big track in Charlotte, went bankrupt doing it, and built himself back up again.

So if Bruton Smith says he wants roller-skating elephants to jump out of airplanes, then PETA had better go on red alert. If it can be bought, massaged, bargained with or coerced, then Smith is in the game. Just ask the city of Concord (read more), which initially blanched when Smith laid out plans for a drag strip to be built on speedway property. Fine, Smith said. He'd move his track somewhere else. Fast forward to Thursday, when Smith unveiled plans for a $60 million, 30,000-seat drag strip that will host its first event in September. Smiling public officials were on hand to celebrate.

Crews are going to have to work around the clock to complete it on time, but with Bruton at the helm, no one doubts it will get done. He offhandedly mentioned that he had spoken to NASCAR team owner Rick Hendrick the other day, and the seven-time Cup champion said he might field his own car in the inaugural event. Was it hyperbole? Was it Smith just trying to sell tickets? Or is Hendrick really willing to get back to his drag-racing roots?

"He was serious," Smith said later. "Rick, that's how he started in racing. Drag racing is where he started. Joe Gibbs has been in drag racing. I think a lot of these guys will come forth, because, you know, this is racing. If you're in racing, you like to do a lot of things."

No one knows that better than Smith, whose motorsports portfolio contains seven Sprint Cup tracks. The latest is New Hampshire Motor Speedway, bought for $340 million. Visitors to the Loudon, N.H., facility in June will see changes, Smith said, although he's not altering the track surface -- not right now, at least. He said he intends to leave both Cup dates in New Hampshire, but he's still eyeing a second race for his Las Vegas track (read more). Monday, NASCAR chairman Brian France said he anticipated no changes on the 2009 schedule. Smith isn't so sure.

"I would think you might see a change in the '09 schedule, yeah," he said. But if New Hampshire is safe, where will those changes come from?

"I think maybe you might find a track out there you want to tear down or something, don't you? Isn't there some place that you don't like to go to cover the events? ... If there's a track out there that you don't like to go to, and you're not treated right, why don't you tear it down?"

Was he referring to Pocono Raceway, an independent facility with two Sprint Cup dates located in rural northeast Pennsylvania? "Ya'll aren't going to pin me down on this," he said with a laugh. And later: "I've never been to Pocono. Never have. I don't even know my way to Pocono. How do you get there from here? I don't know."

You never know what to expect from a man who's tried repeatedly to get Tennessee and Virginia Tech to play a college football game on the infield of his 160,000-seat facility in Bristol, whose Texas Motor Speedway lobbied to host racing as a demonstration sport if Dallas-Fort Worth won a long-shot bid to host the Olympics. Kentucky Speedway, desperate for a Sprint Cup date, sued NASCAR to try and get one and had the case dismissed by a judge. When a shareholder of Smith's company sued NASCAR to try and get a second date for Texas, the sanctioning body settled. That's how much leverage Bruton Smith wields.

NASCAR's recent pronouncement that it might reform some enforcement policies so drivers can express themselves more? That's a move Smith has long championed. (read more)

"About damn time. Here again, there are a lot of emotions out there. If a driver gets out of a car and runs over and pushes another driver, give him a bonus or something. But don't fine him. I've been pushing about '08, let's have a softer side of NASCAR. Let these guys express themselves. If there's a fight that gets too bad, then you need to separate them. But as long as they're just emotions, that's good. Emotion is what it's all about," he said.

"I think they finally came to the realization that they have to do this. They have to let these people be normal athletes. I mean, they get angry out there. You would, too, somebody bumping on you, bumping on you. You might want to get out and whip him. That's exciting."

So is listening to Bruton Smith, if only for the unpredictability of it all. You never know if he's serious. You never know if he's kidding. And you never know what he might do -- or buy, or move -- next.

The opinions expressed are solely of the writer.