Smith, NASCAR have storied past that dates to 1940’s

Tuesday, Dec. 15, 1998 | 9:58 a.m.

Bruton Smith became a major player in NASCAR long before his acquisition of Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

But the North Carolina native's rise to prominence in stock-car racing's premier series has not always been as smooth as the front straightaway at his newest superspeedway.

While amassing six race tracks that host a total of nine Winston Cup Series races, Smith has had more than a few run-ins with the sport's governing body -- dating back to NASCAR's infancy in the late 1940s.

Smith, now 71, once headed the National Stock Car Racing Association, an upstart group that attempted, unsuccessfully, to dethrone Bill France Sr.'s NASCAR as the sport's official sanctioning body in stock-car racing's early days.

Earlier this year, Smith had another run-in with a France -- NASCAR president Bill France Jr. -- over Smith's Texas Motor Speedway. After drivers complained about what they perceived as a potentially dangerous racing surface at the $140 million track, the track had T-shirts printed with the slogan, "No Crying, Shut Up and Drive."

An unamused France took one of the T-shirts, which were sold at the track's souvenir stands, back to his headquarters in Daytona Beach, Fla., promising to "get to the bottom of this."

Smith later spent several million dollars to reconfigure the track.

Although he presides over a multimillion-dollar automobile retail business and the equally lucrative Speedway Motorsports Inc., Smith comes from humble beginnings. He was born and raised in low-income Stanly County, N.C., and got his start in racing promoting stock car races across the Tar Heel State in the 1950s.

Smith got his first taste of operating a major-league race track in 1960 when he teamed with former driver Curtis Turner to open Charlotte Motor Speedway.

Turner and Smith went $500,000 over budget on the projected $1 million facility and opened the gates three weeks late for their first race. Beset by financial problems from the start, Turner was fired as president and Smith resigned his position as vice president.

Smith shifted gears after leaving CMS, retreating to Rockford, Ill., where he amassed a fortune in the automobile retail business. He never sold his stock in CMS, however, and returned to the track in 1975 to assume control after a dispute among the board of directors.

By 1990, Smith had transformed CMS into the Taj Mahal of stock-car racing, adding grandstand seating to accommodate more than 100,000 spectators, building luxury suites and track-side condominiums and installing lights around the 1.5-mile oval.

Smith added Atlanta Motor Speedway to his portfolio in 1990, then took SMI public in 1995, giving him the capital he needed to purchase Bristol Motor Speedway in Tennessee and Sears Point Raceway in Northern California.

In 1997, Smith built Texas Motor Speedway, giving him five Winston Cup tracks.

Published reports have estimated his 67-percent interest in SMI as being worth $700 million -- before the acquisition of Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

Last year, when Smith was trying to land, without success, a second Winston Cup date at TMS, it was rumored he was toying with the idea of holding a non-NASCAR sanctioned "outlaw" race, paying a huge purse to any Cup drivers who showed up. The race never came off.

There also have been rumors, which Smith has vehemently denied, that he is acquiring tracks to position himself to start his own stock-car racing series.

While he has fought losing battles with NASCAR throughout the years, Smith scored a victory over the France family with the purchase of LVMS. Smith's $215 million bid on the 1,500-acre property was $100 million more than the offer tendered by France's International Speedway Corp.

Street & Smith's NASCAR Winston Cup Scene contributed to this report.