Racing on Pit Road

NASCAR under legal siege, and the Subway 400 from Rockingham, North Carolina.

Texas Shareholder Sues NASCAR.........

Just when you think that you have heard the last of Speedway Motorsports' O. Bruton Smith's whining and carping about the second race date at the Texas Motor Speedway facility that he claims NASCAR promised him, a Speedway Motorsports Inc. shareholder emerges with a lawsuit over it. Actually, Speedway Motorsports is also named in the suit as a nominal defendant, by shareholder Francis Ferco, of Plano, Texas.

The Texas track opened for business in 1997, soon after Bruton Smith and the Baher family from New Hampshire had purchased the North Wilksboro, North Carolina racetrack and closed it down. Smith claims that NASCAR promised him that if he built the Texas track, they would give him a race date. North Wilksboro was already on the schedule when it was closed down, so Smith moved the race to Texas thinking that he would then have two race dates at the track. NASCAR saw that Texas now had a race date, and failed to assign another date to the track when they drew up their 1998 schedule. Bruton Smith has claimed ever since that NASCAR owes him a race date for the Texas track.

With this lawsuit now at hand, it appears that Smith promised his shareholders that the track would have two annual Winston Cup events. In a sense, it does appear that NASCAR dropped the ball on this one. There are other things here that we have to consider. If the suit had been brought against NASCAR at the time that this happened, Smith and his shareholders may have stood somewhat of a chance in winning the second date from NASCAR in court. They failed to bring the matter to court in a timely manner. By doing this they have allowed NASCAR to set a precedent in assigning race dates to new tracks on the circuit. New tracks that have been added to the Winston Cup schedule since the Texas track was added are only getting one race per season.

The race schedule is now up to thirty-six races per season, and new speedways are on the drawing boards in different parts of the country. In order to keep the schedule down to a minimum amount of races per season, it stands to reason that these new speedways will only get one race date per annum. The race teams and NASCAR personnel are being run ragged now, constantly traveling, with so many races on the schedule and only three weekends off during the entire season. There has been a lot of talk over the last couple of years concerning the older tracks on the circuit losing one of their two race dates in order to make room on the schedule to add the new tracks. I see the lawyers making a lot of money on this one, and NASCAR emerging unscathed.

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