LAT PHOTOGRAPHICNASCAR president Mike Helton is working with Kentucky track owner Bruton Smith to resolve traffic problems.
By AL PEARCE on 7/15/2011
NASCAR president Mike Helton took the unusual step of calling his own press conference on Friday to discuss--what else?--last weekend’s traffic nightmare for the Sprint Cup Series race at Kentucky Speedway. He said NASCAR “will not rest” until it works with track owner Bruton Smith to see that a similar situation doesn’t happen again. Thousands of fans never got to the track or were denied entry when they arrived because of traffic and parking issues.
“We take what happened last weekend very seriously,” Helton said Friday at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, another Smith-owned track with traffic challenges. “Immediately conversations opened up between us, the track and [parent company] Speedway Motorsports Inc.
“They’re from the highest levels on the NASCAR side to the highest of levels on Speedway Motorsports side. They include Jim France, Brian France, Lesa Kennedy, Bruton Smith, Marcus Smith . . . everybody is engaged in this topic. The intent is to find out exactly what happened so that a cure or fix can be determined.”
Even though the Quaker State 400 was the track’s first Sprint Cup race, Helton didn’t seem inclined to give it a mulligan.
“I’ll remind everybody that NASCAR has been racing [there] for several years in Nationwide and the Truck Series, so it’s not like a brand-new construction or a brand-new location,” he said. “But it was the inaugural Sprint Cup race, which in some regards takes it to a different level. There were a lot of planning meetings, a lot of sessions that took place, and our role is to have dialogue and have assurance that the promoters are experienced and are on the right track.
“There was a lot of planning [shown] to us and to fans. I know on one trip there, in the lobby of the office complex, there was material showing a very well thought-out, very nice, full-color page of traffic ingress. There was another page of traffic egress that, according to track folks, was being mailed to the ticket buyers.”
Helton pointed out that parts of the Kentucky Speedway grounds underwent construction recently. He said NASCAR must determine how much of that work and changes to the ground may have made the situation worse.
“What was happening was a lot of construction, a lot of new work, some of which took place after the ownership change before we went back for Nationwide and Truck races last year,” he said. “But a lot happened between last races and this inaugural [Cup] race. We tracked those [construction changes] along the way.
“Part of what we want to know now is, was that plan followed or what might have interfered with the preparation that caused what happened? Did the construction contribute to that and did it compound the situation? Was there overconfidence from the fact they’d raced there for 10 years and not taking in full consideration of the physical changes taking place? Those are the kind of questions we’ll have to get to the bottom of to figure out the solution.”
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