What Bruton said of Kentucky & how he responded after I challenged him

Bruton Smith, whose Speedway Motorsports Inc., owns Kentucky Speedway met the media to talk about last weekend’s problems with traffic last weekend. Here’s part of what he said in his press conference and in our back-and-forth at the end of the press conference when I questioned him on comments he made:

“We do have a lot of things that we’ve been working on continuously. We’ll continue to work until we resolve all the issues connected with traffic. You’ve got to remember, we don’t control traffic out there on that Interstate. I do have a meeting with the governor (of Kentucky) and a lot of his support people and that will be next week. That will be addressing all the problems that was created by whoever. I guess they were mainly were created because so many people were trying to get in there and they were unable to do so.  ... We will continue to fix it. We know how to fix things. We know how to build things. I think we are guilty of building the finest speedways in this country and we will continue to do whatever it takes.’’

QUESTION: Do you think in your attempt to be funny the other day at Kentucky it came across as being flippant to some of the fans when you said that weekend you won’t get out of the track until Tuesday because of the traffic?

BRUTON: “I didn’t take that as being flippant or anything. Of course, we did time it, the place had emptied in 3 hours and 20 minutes. Now we’ve had speedways that took longer than that.

QUESTION: According to media in Cincinnati, a spokesperson for the Kentucky State Police said of the traffic: “The bottleneck really occurred at the track. The fact is if the Interstate was 20 lanes wide it would have not mattered because it’s all got to end somewhere.’’ You agree with that statement or not?

BRUTON: “Don’t know the gentleman. I don’t recognize his expertise. I disagree completely.’’

QUESTION: What will you tell the Kentucky governor in your meeting next week about what needs to be done? And are you prepared to say that if you don’t get what you want, you’d be willing to move the Kentucky date elsewhere?

BRUTON: “Las Vegas baby. … I don’t know everything that the governor and I will talk about. If I did I wouldn’t reveal it now. I like the governor a lot. We will talk about a lot of things. I can’t tell you what they all will be.’’

QUESTION: So if you don’t get what you want, you’d be willing to move the Kentucky date to another of your tracks?

BRUTON: “I would not answer that at this time. I will wait until after my wonderful meeting with the governor and we will go from there.’’

On a question about the parking, Bruton said: “I’m sincerely sorry that everybody did not get in there. I’m sorry that we had such a traffic … although I had continuously warned people about that Interstate 71. I told everybody that would listen that Interstate 71 sucked. It’s terrible. It’s the lousiest piece of interstate that I’ve ever driven on. I was hoping that would get some attention. It got a little bit but it sure didn’t get a lot.

QUESTION: Did you consider giving refunds at all in lieu of the ticket exchange?

BRUTON: “No sir, we did not. We offered the (ticket) exchange, yes. Are you talking about a cash refund? Reporter: Yes

BRUTON: No. Did not and we will not. Reporter: Why?

BRUTON: “We don’t want to.’’

QUESTION: Did you expect traffic to be that bad?

BRUTON: “I don’t think anybody, even the people who were unlucky enough to sit in traffic for four hours. I don’t think anybody could foresee what occurred. I don’t think anyone, maybe God knew, I don’t know of anybody else that knew how many people would try to come and see this event.

QUESTION: Were you disappointed that Talladega and Michigan put out press releases about the woes at Kentucky?

BRUTON: “Absolutely. We had some response on who the heck he is, I don’t care to know. It would be like one of my people responding to Daytona in a nasty way when the track broke up and they had to stop the race for two hours. I don’t know what I would have done if one of my people would have responded and bad mouthed Daytona because they had a problem. That is not what we’re about.  I was born and raised on a farm. We had a jackass that got away from us. He was young, frisky. My dad, I remember him saying that’s the sorriest jackass that he ever had. We never did recover him. I understand that he has popped up somewhere in Michigan somewhere (NOTE: which some could assume is a reference to the Michigan track president in this situation).

At this point, I interrupted Bruton.

ME:  “You’ve repeatedly referred to Homestead as North Cuba. You’ve said things like that. If you said things like that on Homestead, aren’t you being hypocritical?’’

BRUTON: “Tell us where it is located. Is it not really in North Cuba?’’

ME: “It’s in the United States.’’

BRUTON: “Yes, but isn’t it really in North Cuba?’’

ME: “Is this (track) in South Canada?

BRUTON: “More or less it is. I don’t have any problem with you referring to this as South Canada because we draw a lot of Canadians here. If you stay with us Sunday, we’ll have some nice wonderful person sing the Canadian National Anthem. Do you sing the Cuban national anthem in North Cuba (his reference to Homestead)?

ME: “No, they don’t.’’

BRUTON: “Well, they should.’’

ME: “How is what you do different from what Michigan and Talladega did? You’re upset by it.’’

BRUTON: “I’m not upset about it. I’m saying it’s stupid. And you can’t fix stupid.’’

ME: “Couldn’t somebody say that about what you say about Homestead? That it’s stupid and you can’t fix stupid?

BRUTON: “You can say whatever you want to say. I said it’s stupid. I would have had a problem with one of my people if they had done something knocking Daytona when Daytona had a problem. I don’t remember any of my people when Bobby Allison tried to get into the grandstand at Talladega. I’ve said a little something. I’m for NASCAR all the way. I want to build this sport. I was watching something and it was referred to as dancing partners at Daytona. Now, if you want to be critical of something. I’m critical of that race. Did you see that race? It took two cars to win a race. Now, if you’ve got to have dancing partners, then we have a different race. To me, it’s like Major League Baseball and they change the rules, you’ve got to have two bats when you go to bat. That doesn’t make any sense.

“I’m asking NASCAR, let’s go to work on this car and let’s stop this foolishness of having two cars, one pushing another one, you’ve got to have a dancing partner. That’s not what we built this sport on. That is not good. Who is here from Talladega? (NOTE: No one is) I need to say something nice about Talladega. Well, I’ll just hold it. I don’t want to say anything good. That to me, we’ve got things to do, we’ve got traffic problems but here again dancing partners. Let’s work on that, too.

“Let’s see who can fix what first. I am absolutely dedicated to fix the problems in Kentucky before the dancing partner thing can be cured.’’

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