King Of The Mountain; Bruton Smith

By Mark Young

We heard all of the predictions this weekend about how the newly configured track in Las Vegas was going to be terrible.  Drivers like Tony Stewart were very vocal about how the track never should have been changed.  People in the media, this blogger included, predicted a single-groove parade of cars around the bottom of the track.  Well unless I watched a different race yesterday we were all proved wrong.  I saw three-wide racing and lots of passing yesterday and taking that into consideration I have decided to make Speedway Motorsports CEO Bruton Smith my King Of The Mountain.

This is a little out of character for me because I have been very critical of Speedway Motorsports for several years because of the games that were played by purchasing North Wilkesboro and Rockingham with the sole intentions of closing them both down in order to get additional dates on other tracks that they own.  HOWEVER, the race that we saw yesterday was three times better than the action we have seen in prior years at Las Vegas.  Bruton Smith and his company made a bold decision to demolish the track and every building in the infield with the intentions of rebuilding the entire facility.  They narrowed the track, moved pit road closer to the stands, and nearly doubled the banking.  Tire tests showed that this track was fast and then there were comments that it was too fast and that tires might be an issue reminiscent of Lowe's Motor-speedway.  Think back to 1998 and the first race after Bruton's group reconfigured the Atlanta Motor-speedway.  Geoff Bodine won the pole (on Hoosier Tires I believe) at a whopping 197 mph bringing out calls for restrictor plates or anything to slow the cars down.  That race was a single-groove parade but look at that track now.  We have seen more side-by-side finishes and multi-groove action than almost any other track on the circuit.  Vegas had multiple grooves during it's first race!!

Sure I could have chosen Jimmie Johnson or Mark Martin to be King this week but I just figured Bruton Smith deserved it for making a gutsy decision to remodel a very nice track and trust the designers and consultants who turned it into a very special place.

That's what I think, what say you?