tool name
closeBruton Smith has a story to tell - and he isn't shy about telling it
THATSRACIN.COM OPINION
DAVID POOLE
The Charlotte Observer
Wednesday, Jun. 25, 2008
Speedway Motorsports Inc. chief Bruton Smith during a news conference prior to the NASCAR Nationwide Series race at Kentucky Speedway in Sparta, Ky. File
A midweek look at NASCAR, other racing and more from the Observer's motorsports beat writer:
OBSERVATIONS
• Pennies For Wessa is off to a remarkable start. More than $4,450 had been contributed as of Tuesday to benefit the Miller family. Wessa Miller, 16 now, was 6 years old when she gave Dale Earnhardt a lucky penny that Earnhardt had in his car when he won his only Daytona 500 victory in 1998. If you want to read the Millers' story, a fan has donated his time to set up a website at www.penniesforwessa.org
Donations can be made from that site or can be mailed to Pennies For Wessa, Attention: Mike Damron, Community Trust Bank, P.O. Box 39, Mouthcard, Ky. 41548. Make out the check to Pennies For Wessa.
• Bruton Smith kept a low profile last weekend at Infineon Raceway, but you have to suspect he'll be more visible this week at New Hampshire Motor Speedway. This is the first race since he bought the track in Loudon, and members of the New England racing media haven't heard Bruton's routine first-hand. It'll be hard for him to turn down an audience like that.
• I really like Elliott Sadler a lot, but the way his luck has been lately if I see him get on an airplane I'm scheduled to be on I think I'm going to have to take a later flight.
MY TWO CENTS
I love people who defend road course racing in NASCAR's top series, and above all others I love their argument that road racing is the most pure homage to the sport's roots.
This reasoning, a term that only loosely applies, is that the earliest stock car racers honed their skills by running from the law while hauling illegal whiskey, thus making them road racers at heart.
What that line of defense ignores, of course, is history.
Cars were racing in the Indianapolis 500 long before there was Prohibition, and there were races staged at huge wooden-planked tracks all over the place, including in the South, for decades before stock car racing became popular.
Stock car racing, in fact, actually only became after moonshiners brought their hot rods from the back roads, where they were being chased by revenue agents and the local constabulary, to oval race courses.
You can't charge fans to stand on the roadside between Hooterville and Possum Gulch and watch a fast car go by once with the sheriff eating dust. But the early racing promoters figured out you could get fans to come watch if you put those fast cars and great drivers on the horse track at the county fairgrounds and let them go at it.
Stock car racing is an oval-track sport. Period.
There have been 2,190 races in the history of what's now the Cup Series. Based on statistics found at racing-reference.info, only 114 of them have taken place on road courses. That's 5.2 percent.
I am not saying you can't be in love with NASCAR road racing if you want to. But don't tell me it's some kind of old-school tribute to days gone by. That dog don't hunt.