Bruton Smith would like to see the NASCAR haulers return to Las Vegas Motor Speedway twice per season. (Bryan Haraway/Getty Images Photo) ยป More Photos
Speedway Motorsports Inc. Chairman and CEO Bruton Smith said Friday he hopes to add a second race date at SMI’s Las Vegas Motor Speedway next year, as well as persuade NASCAR to relocate its annual Sprint Cup awards banquet here.
Smith also said he has proposed a date switch that would see SMI’s Atlanta Motor Speedway swap its traditional late October race date with the Labor Day weekend race at California Speedway, a track owned by rival International Speedway Corp. Thus, the Labor Day weekend race would be in Atlanta, while the series would race in California some seven-eight weeks late.
Speaking Friday at LVMS, Smith would not directly say whether he planned to move a date from his New Hampshire Motor Speedway to Las Vegas next year. But he and track President Chris Powell confirmed they had met with the Las Vegas Convention & Visitor’s Bureau to seek a $10 million commitment to bring a second race to Las Vegas next year.
Smith said he hoped NASCAR would award LVMS a second date on merit, and noted that previously, he’s had to buy tracks to get dates from NASCAR. “They have never ever (given me a date) and I think it’s just an oversight,” said Smith. “They meant to, but it was just an oversight.”
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As for the Atlanta-California date switch, Smith said, “I hope that we will have an answer in the very near future.”
Last year, Smith floated the idea of moving the banquet from New York City, its home since 1981. He renewed calls to move the event again during his Friday press conference, citing high hotel prices and the ability to include fans in the event if it were held in Las Vegas.
“I don’t know how y’all feel, but if you go there (New York) and you look at your hotel bill when you go up there, I looked at mine and it looked like my phone number,” said Smith. … “The time has come when we ought to do something different and the different thing would be to have it right here,” said Smith.
But NASCAR is unlikely to award a new race date or move the banquet in the near future, said Ramsey Poston, managing director of corporate communications for NASCAR. “The schedule is full now,” said Poston.
And as for the banquet, “We feel like it works well now in New York,” Poston said.
