Kentucky Speedway claimed to have sold out all the seats for its 9th running of the IRL series. In fact, the press release stated that up to 2,000 ’standing room’ tickets would be offered for sale on raceday.
The largest crowd the speedway has hosted in the past was for the recent NA$CAR cup light event, won by Joey Logano. The numbers for that day was about 73,000. The largest crowd for an IRL event is estimated to be around 65,000.
All this sounds good to SMI’s Bruton Smith, who has a deal on the table to acquire Kentucky Speedway and has promised that a date would be set for a cup series race during the ‘09 season.
There were a couple of problems with this whole deal. Grumpy watched the closing laps of the IRL race. It was a pretty good finish with Scott Dixon passing Helio Castroneves on the final lap as Helio’s car appeared to slow in turns 3-4 from low fuel. The problem was, there were an awful lot of fans cleverly disquised as empty seats! As for the standing room crowd, it looked like they either left early or found seats among the grandstand crowd.
Been hearing that SMI may not follow through to close the deal on Kentucky Speedway. NA$CAR has made it clear that no cup series date is available unless SMI takes a date from an existing site. As for setting the ‘09 schedule, NA$CAR has also stated that it is too late in the process to move a race from another track since the annual agreements have been signed for the current tracks with cup dates.
Without a lucrative cup series date, SMI may not see the need to add Kentucky Speedway to its portfolio.
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