Kentucky Speedway now belongs to Bruton Smith

Well, I guess officially Kentucky Speedway belongs to Speedway Motorsports Inc. but Smith is the front man for the publicly traded company and he was the one that made the big announcement an hour ago in the Time Warner Media Center at Lowe's Motor Speedway in Charlotte.

And the even bigger news is that Smith has promised that he is bringing a NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race to the track in 2009. In typical Smith fashion, he did not say where that race would come from or when it would be run. SMI already operates six NASCAR-sanctioned tracks with 13 Sprint Cup dates.

"This is a wonderful opportunity to grow into a new market in a modern speedway facility," Smith said.

One thing is for sure, it won't be coming from Texas Motor Speedway. Eddie Gossage confirmed that, although he wants a new date for his fall race, he is not worried about giving one up and not getting one in return.

"We are the top performing track," Gossage told The Examiner and Kickin' the Tires. "We sell more tickets than any other SMI track."

No details were released on the amount of the sale to SMI but Jerry Carroll said the original backers did not recoup their $80 million investment.

"I had a dream in this speedway and the state of Kentucky had a dream on this speedway and fortunately, Bruton SMith has made that dream come true," Carroll said. "The state has $90 million into this. We have been in this for eight years. I have four partners that have been very generous.  (But) we did not recoup the investment. He (Smith) purchased the assets, he did not purchase our company."

Carroll's investment group is involved in a heated legal battle with NASCAR alleging that the sanctioning body and its sister company International Speedway Corp. unfairly prevent certain tracks from obtaining a Sprint Cup race. Carroll said that lawsuit does not go away with this sale.

"The litigation will continue on as long as we think there is an opportunity to get a level playing field," Carroll said. "It's been eight years and I haven't been able to work with NASCAR one time, so I don't know if it gives us leverage in any way."