Sport's 'ultimate success story' is New Hampshire (cont'd)

"Bob Bahre knew this was a hotbed," Hunter said. "To people in the South, it might have been kind of a shock. But we knew. I knew, based on what the Southern 500 had been, that this is a hotbed of NASCAR fans. You know, they talk about good ol' boys, or whatever? For the Northern good ol' boys -- hunters, farmers, etc., people who worked with their hands -- it was a hotbed. There were plenty of fans."

Rusty Wallace won that race before the first in a long line of sellout crowds. Traffic tie-ups preceding the inaugural Cup race prompted the state of New Hampshire to widen a highway before the next year's event. Hunter remembers attending grand marshal dinners and meeting dignitaries like John Sununu, the former New Hampshire governor and White House chief of staff, and former Maine senator George Mitchell. To little New Hampshire, which lives in Boston's considerable shadow, hosting the largest sporting event in all of New England was a very big deal.

Of course, there were trials. Bahre secured a second Cup weekend only after buying out the family that had owned half of North Wilkesboro Speedway, which closed in 1996. The deaths of drivers Adam Petty and Kenny Irwin months apart in 2000 led many to question the safety of the facility, which has since been bolstered with a soft-wall system. In 2007, Bahre sold the track to Bruton Smith's Speedway Motorsports Inc. empire for the tidy sum of $340 million. Through it all, the fans continued to turn out.

"I knew how dedicated race fans in this area were," Bodine said. "I lived it, all through the '80s. People don't realize how many race tracks there are in the New England states."

Bodine, standing under a tent in the Sprint Cup garage, is interrupted by a man who approaches with an outstretched hand. "I used to see you drive at Stafford," says the stranger, referring to Stafford Speedway, a legendary modified track in Stafford Springs, Conn. The encounter leaves the NASCAR executive with a broad smile.

"There's one of those race fans, right there," he says. One of the many that New Hampshire Motor Speedway was built upon.

The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer.