Columnist Brian Hilderbrand: Drivers critical of Bahre-run speedway

Tuesday, July 23, 2002 | 9:47 a.m.

Brian Hilderbrand covers motor sports for the Las Vegas Sun. His motor sports notebook appears Friday. He can be reached at bh@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4089.

One of the good things to come out of Bruton Smith's purchase of Las Vegas Motor Speedway in 1998 is that Bob Bahre no longer runs the local 1.5-mile superspeedway.

Bahre was brought in -- at NASCAR's request -- to help then-owner Richie Clyne run LVMS in the summer of 1997 and ensure that the track's inaugural NASCAR Winston Cup race the following spring went off without a hitch.

Bahre and son Gary have built their two Winston Cup races at New Hampshire International Speedway into the largest spectator events in New England. Based on his comments after Sunday's race, however, the 75-year-old Bahre needs to seriously consider permanent retirement.

After listening to virtually every driver in the 43-car field complain about the track conditions in the caution-filled New England 300, Bahre arrogantly dismissed the drivers' concerns thusly:

"Nobody left, did they?" Bahre said of the crowd of 101,000. "Everybody stayed to the end."

Accidents are a part of auto racing -- and it is no secret that they lure many fans -- but for a promoter to use "entertainment value" to justify what amounted to an unsafe racing surface does nothing to help a sport that for decades has craved mainstream acceptance.

Sunday's race featured six accidents and five spins among 14 caution periods, though no drivers were seriously hurt.

In an effort to add a second groove and improve racing at the 1.058-mile oval, the Bahres this year widened and repaved the track through the turns. The changes resulted in an excess of "marbles " -- pieces of asphalt and tire rubber -- that accumulated outside the racing groove Sunday.

Cars that got outside the groove and hit the marbles either wobbled and bounced off other cars, spun out or drifted into the outside wall.

Jerry Nadeau called the track "garbage," and even the usually mild-mannered Mark Martin took umbrage at the conditions.

"I just don't know if there's anything they can do to make this race track acceptable," Martin said. "I know they try, but just because the Bahres are good people doesn't mean this track is any good to race on. It's really, really a shame that we had to race under those conditions."

NASCAR, which has become more sensitive to driver safety in the wake of four deaths in its top three series in 2000 and 2001, will look into the New Hampshire situation, according to Gary Nelson, NASCAR's managing director of competition.

The Robert Yates Racing team also lost 25 driver point and 25 owner points because of the infraction.

Michael McSwain, crew chief of Ricky Rudd's No. 28 Ford, was fined $500 for using an unapproved jacking bolt.