New Hampshire track gears up for Chase race weekend

On bookend weekends of the summer calendar, Jerry Gappens becomes the honorary car czar of the largest metropolis in New Hampshire.

Gappens is the executive vice president and general manager of New Hampshire Motor Speedway, a monolith facility that rises like a phoenix of asphalt and steel in the rustic Lakes Region hamlet of Loudon.

NHMS will attract more than 100,000 stay-over guests and day-go commuters for NASCAR's Sylvania 300 stock car race next Sunday, the first event of the Chase for the Sprint Cup among the series' top 12 drivers. The venue inspired a similar influx of spectators June 29, when NHMS hosted the Lenox Industrial Tools 301.

''This track has a 19-year history of putting on these events, and you keep tweaking and improving with every race," Gappens said. "You have to have the infrastructure in place to accommodate all that and you're basically setting up an infrastructure that you would for a city.

''We have in place all things a city would need. We have police, we have fire and protection and garbage disposal and first aid access. You have food vendors and retail shops, and it really evolves into a city for a weekend."

NASCAR and NHMS are more than associates in a bowl of alphabet soup. The two entities engage in a temporary marriage for the dual purposes of entertainment and profit. For the enterprise to work there must be cooperation between them set down in an arrangement of defined roles. NASCAR brings the show, and NHMS moves the masses.

''We work hand in hand," Gappens said. "NASCAR is the circus, they are the act coming in, while we are the promoter and the venue. NASCAR brings in the talent and they are a combination of that and a league such as the NFL or Major League Baseball. When they come on Thursday, they basically take over the track for what happens on the track.

''That is basically their area of responsibility. Everything outside the walls of the racing surface is in the hands of the speedway and our staff to execute."

The success of any race on the NASCAR circuit - whether it involves the midwinter splendor of Daytona or a soggy summer night in the backwaters of the Carolinas - requires strict adherence to the "three T's" principle, which Gappens will never tinker with.

''I've been in this business for a long time, and one of the things that's always talked about is the three T's of putting on a race," he said. "The three T's are tickets, traffic and toilets."

The two events run at NHMS are strategically positioned on the NASCAR schedule to attract the sport's premier drivers and crews.. The Sylvania 300 carries with it the prestige of being No. 1 on the list of Chase races.

The Lenox 301 didn't follow script when a prince of New England stole the race from two kingpins of NASCAR. Rookie Joe Logano, 19, of Middletown, Conn., gambled that the gathering clouds would produce a rain shower before his gas tank emptied. The gamble paid off, as Logano became the youngest driver to win a NASCAR premier series event by outlasting icons Jeff Gordon and Kurt Busch in the rain-shortened race.

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.