If you were part of the Kentucky Speedway “experience” last weekend, I’m sure by now you know that Bruton Smith blamed everyone else around him for the situation and made it very clear there will be no refunds to anyone who did not get in. It seems he clarified the very point I made 2 days ago about how tracks do not refund tickets. ‘Ticket Exchange plans for Kentucky Speedway Victims/Fans‘.
NASCAR‘s Mike Helton held a press conference at New Hampshire Motor Speedway this weekend to address the event and the estimates that upwards of maybe 20,000 people did not make it into the track to see the race due to either the traffic situation or parking snafus.
Helton said this will not be lost in the shuffle of the ongoing season and then also reiterated that NASCAR is a unique business structure of the sport in how the facilities that the events are held at are responsible for being properly prepared for their events. The Professional Bowlers Association (PBA) is much the same way… The location an event is held at is responsible to market locally and prepare for an event, with the costs of the event squarely on their shoulders. It’s an independent relationship between the sports sanctioning body and the event itself. It seems odd, but that’s how it is.
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Adding Insult To Injury
After Helton spoke, Bruton Smith spoke at a later event about the Kentucky Speedway issues. In the approach he took to talking about the situation, he seemed to do more harm than good with the fans. Yet if you’re a long-time NASCAR fan, you probably weren’t surprised by how he addressed the issues.
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Traffic Was A Known Issue Going Into This
First, I want to address something that I did not know about the track and shocked me to read: It seems that the primary issue of traffic issues at Kentucky is nothing new. I came across a snippet on the web that indicated that ever since the 2000 Truck Series race that was first held there, the track has always had traffic issues. And that was with only 66k seat stands.
Despite that, Bruton Smith moved forward with a NASCAR Sprint Cup Series event and brought the track seating capacity up to 107k seats.
It’s confusing to see that bit.
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The Finger Pointing
During the Smith press event, in a round-about way he blamed the fans for showing up late by indicating those that got there early enough were in their seats. He blamed the region for lack of roads, saying I-71 is a miserable road. He blamed the parking company they chose to hire, saying they had inexperienced staff out there.
At one point, in addressing a possible modification of the highway, a reporter said that a traffic cop noted that no matter what you do, the traffic is still going to bottleneck somewhere and mods to the road won’t help. Smith snapped back that he does not recognize that individuals expertise in engineering or traffic issues, though as we all know, it’s usually the working man who’s in the middle of things, that can sometimes have a pretty good perspective.
It was pretty amazing to listen to Smith. On one hand, his snappy retorts weren’t inaccurate, but neither were they placating. In fact Smith took his hard-nosed, business sense perspectives and applied his answers from that stand-point. After the press conference fans calling into radio shows and hitting up websites had many choice words to describe Bruton Smith, and not too many of them were positive.
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