Looking at the odds on Kansas' two-race future

Ladies and gentlemen, place your bets.

The Kansas Speedway casino project, after being placed on hiatus late last year because of instability in equity markets, is once again a go. Track president Jeff Boerger, driving a show car festooned with the speedway's race logos, motored over to the Kansas state capital of Topeka on Monday to hand-deliver his application to build a $700 million Hard Rock casino and hotel overlooking Turn 2. Given that an identical proposal was approved last fall before economic conditions forced developers to withdraw it in December, it seems a safe bet that lottery honchos in the Sunflower State will green-light a gambling facility that could be open by late 2010.

Trying again

Kansas Speedway and its partners have resubmitted a bid for a Hard Rock Casino overlooking Turn 2 at the speedway in hopes of getting a second Cup race at the track.

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It promises to be quite a place, complete with a spa, restaurants, a 100,000-square-foot casino, and -- eventually -- a second Sprint Cup event. As with the original proposal, the facility will petition NASCAR to bring a second race weekend to the 81,687-seat track should Kansas Speedway be awarded the casino contract. There's a lot of weight behind this; Lesa France Kennedy, president of parent company International Speedway Corp., appeared before the casino review board to help pitch the original proposal last year. Her brother, NASCAR chairman Brian France, has said repeatedly that he would back the move of another race to Kansas. Barring something unforeseen, there will be blackjack, roulette, and a second NASCAR weekend on the bluffs of the Missouri River sometime in the next few years.

So now, the age-old question -- where's that event coming from? There are no indications that NASCAR will expand an already too-bloated schedule that right now runs from Presidents Day nearly to Thanksgiving. That sucker is full, Brian France has said so many times in so many words. Which means Kansas' gain will be some other track's loss. It's a painful process, the transplantation of a Sprint Cup weekend, as anyone at Darlington or the old North Carolina Speedway can attest. But if the casino project is approved, and NASCAR stands behind its statements, and world leaders do not expand the modern calendar to 53 weeks a year, then some track is going to wind up the loser here.

And nowhere are winners and losers better identified than a casino. So step up to the felt, put your money down, and let's set the house odds on which tracks appear most likely to lose a race to Kansas in the not-so-distant future:

Daytona International Speedway: Off the board. Easy, now. The Daytona 500 isn't going anywhere. That summer race, though, is often plagued by rain, and they don't even sell the backstretch seats anymore. Hey, if ISC wants a second race in Kansas bad enough, who knows what they're willing to do. But then there's the whole matter of Daytona being the sport's headquarters, which will probably keep two races there forever. That natural conflict of interest has led our odds makers to pull the big track off the board.

Talladega Superspeedway: 100-1. Talladega's battle to fill its 143,231 seats began not with this current economic downturn, but with Hurricane Katrina, which lashed the Gulf Coast more than four years ago. Its aftereffects were evident in the grandstands during Talladega's next race. Even so, diehards still claim to love this Roman Colosseum style of auto racing, even if they don't quite turn out in the numbers they once did. Drivers merely tolerate it. Still, the relative scarcity of restrictor-plate events likely keeps the place safe.

Darlington Raceway: 50-1. Its location in an economically-depressed rural area is anything but appealing to corporate sponsors, yet the old track has survived one near-death experience after another and is riding a streak of four consecutive sellout events. Given all the capital money ISC has sunk into Darlington -- lights, new grandstands, new tunnel, new racing surface -- it's unlikely the track's one remaining date is going anywhere.

Dover International Speedway: 30-1. A linchpin of NASCAR's national expansion, Dover serves four large cities -- Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington and New York -- and added seats every year between 1986 and 2001. But at least one shareholder is urging that the company sell its race track holdings, a drumbeat that grows louder every year. As a public company, Dover has an obligation to review all offers. Should one of those eventually come from ISC, who knows what might happen.

Pocono Raceway: 25-1. The Mattioli family has owned the triangle-shaped track in Pennsylvania since it first appeared on the NASCAR schedule in 1974. Of all Sprint Cup facilities, it's closest to the coveted New York market. But even drivers have questioned whether a place so out of the way should have two race weekends. Like Dover, the track would likely have to be sold for one race to be moved. The Mattiolis say that isn't happening. Of course, nobody's offered to cut them a check yet, either.

Atlanta Motor Speedway: 10-1. Here it is, the 124,000-seat elephant in the room. With all those corporate headquarters in the city and all those race fans in the region, Atlanta should be a smash hit. And yet, questions about its future persist. Maybe the new Labor Day night race will turn things around. Maybe not. During the last round of realignment, former NASCAR chairman Bill France Jr. set the precedent of allowing race track companies to move holdings within their own portfolio. Obviously, ISC does not own Atlanta. Bruton Smith's company does. Any attempt to shift an Atlanta date to Kansas, no matter how viable the idea, could result in a legal battle that would make the Kentucky lawsuit look like an episode of The People's Court.

Martinsville Speedway: 5-1. Martinsville, on the other hand, is an ISC holding. It's also in a region that's struggling economically, and like Darlington or Pocono, seems just a little too far from anywhere. Of course, nothing screams "back to basics" like a facility built in 1949 capable of producing the kind of finish we saw Sunday. The place is a short track, and there aren't enough of those on the schedule, and that certainly helps its case. But any discussions on where the Kansas date comes from will certainly make for some nervous times in southern Virginia.

Auto Club Speedway of Southern California: 3-1. Would NASCAR and ISC actually consider pulling a race date from the largest market the sport visits every year? Given the California track's epic underperformance since it became a two-race site in 2004, it's not outside the realm of possibility. The speedway's first Chase race, coming this October, may speak volumes about the viability of that region -- especially in contrast to Kansas, which has a much better record of selling tickets, and will host the Sprint Cup tour the preceding week.

Michigan International Speedway: Even. Southeastern Michigan is ground zero for this economic recession. Automakers are nearing bankruptcy, manufacturing jobs are disappearing, home foreclosure rates are skyrocketing, even daily newspapers are going out of business. Detroit and its environs have it worse than anywhere else, and ticket sales for the track's two Sprint Cup races will be scrutinized like never before. The 2-mile, ISC-owned track in Brooklyn has always been important because of its proximity to the car manufacturers; these days, that may be more a hindrance than anything else. The folks at Michigan haven't done anything wrong. They just happened to be located in a region that could bear the scars of this recession for years to come.

The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer.