Smith committed to push new Kentucky home onto Cup schedule

With the purchase of Kentucky Speedway last week, Bruton Smith is wasting no time making the most of his new asset. Pledging to add as many as 50,000 seats to the facility (it currently holds 66,000), he's also determined to get the 1.5-mile tri-oval a Sprint Cup date by any means possible.

Of course, that's easier said than done, as NASCAR CEO Brian France quickly drew a line in the sand that Kentucky won't be on the schedule next year. But SMI holds a lot of leverage -- it owns 12 of the 36 race dates on the schedule -- and what Bruton Smith wants, he usually gets.

Just take this recent example: in 1996 he purchased North Wilkesboro Speedway with former New Hampshire track owner Bob Bahre, with the sole intention of stripping its two Cup race dates. It didn't take long for them to succeed: by '97 Bahre's New Hampshire track got itself a second race, while the other date went to Smith's new 1.5-mile speedway in Fort Worth, Texas. NASCAR had no choice in the matter, and the small North Carolina short track has laid dormant ever since.

It's that type of history that leaves you thinking not if another track is going to lose its place on the schedule, but when. Early rumors had Smith buying Pocono Raceway for the express purpose of selling off its two Cup dates for Kentucky and a second race at perhaps his biggest crown jewel -- Las Vegas -- but Pocono owner Joe Mattioli came out and said all bets are off on a deal. So now it's back to the drawing board for SMI; it's just a simple matter of where it'll point its chalk and eraser next.

In looking at the landscape right now, there are four tracks that look particularly vulnerable to a sudden change of plans. Here's a list of those in the most jeopardy of losing a race date in 2009:

Atlanta. Of all of Bruton Smith's SMI tracks, AMS stands the highest chance of losing a date. That's ironic because the track is usually lauded for providing some of the most competitive, side-by-side racing of all intermediates on the circuit. But the Car of Tomorrow threw the track a curveball, and a lackluster race this spring could provide Smith with the ammo he needs to make a move. President Ed Clark vehemently denied last week that stripping a date would ever be under consideration, but the best kept secrets would lose all meaning if the boss told everyone exactly what was happening.

And the empty seats at AMS have to be troubling for Clark's plea. The Speedway has one of the highest seating capacities in the sport at 118,000, but attendance has struggled to reach six digits in recent years. A poster child for the struggling economy, the Georgia drought and unrelenting traffic on race day has also led to fans staying home. When two race dates struggle to reach the sold out crowd that graced Smith's 150,000-seat Las Vegas Motor Speedway this March, it's easy to understand why AMS has quickly fallen down the pecking order.

If Smith does make a move, look for the track to lose its spring race, where cold weather has usually kept Southern fans cooped up at home. Kentucky is in an even colder climate, but Smith would likely take a chance on making a change; after all, fans packed Bristol Motor Speedway two Springs ago in nearby Virginia, even when it snowed.

Dover. One of just three tracks not owned by SMI or NASCAR's International Speedway Corporation (Pocono and Indy are the others), racing's Monster Mile could be in danger of getting swallowed up for the right price. Dover Motorsports, Inc. has been frustrated in its inability to gets its premier secondary track -- Nashville -- a Cup race date, and is also struggling under the weight of Nationwide-only tracks outside St. Louis, MO and Memphis, TN. It's telling that when given an opportunity to say an outright "no" shortly after Pocono's denial of sale, Dover CEO Denis McGlynn didn't say it; surely, that will open the door to Smith making a push for the track.

If Smith succeeds, robbing a date from the Speedway would be easier than you might think, despite its high level of popularity. Dover's a midpoint between the markets of Philadelphia, New York, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C., but all those places also have other racetracks in their region. And with plans to build a track in New York City during the next five years, Dover could become an expendable enough commodity for Smith to justify a switch.