Bruton Smith, NASCAR Hall of Famer and racetrack magnate, dies at 95

When local politicians balked at letting Bruton Smith build an NHRA dragstrip next to Charlotte Motor Speedway in 2007, Smith went straight to his bag of tricks.

Oh yeah? You won’t let me build the dragstrip? Well, maybe I’ll just move the whole racetrack over the border to South Carolina then.

Within a year, approvals had not only been granted for the dragstrip, but officials renamed the road to the racetrack as “Bruton Smith Boulevard.”

That instance was classic Smith: A bombastic, colorful character who was always a salesman at heart and wasn’t afraid of stirring up drama to get his way.

Smith died Wednesday at the age of 95, concluding a long life that saw much success for both Smith and the sport of stock car racing. His willingness to pour hundreds of millions of dollars into the Speedway Motorsports properties led to fan-friendly innovations and spurred an arms race with NASCAR’s founding France family that raised the standards of American motorsports.

“Bruton’s contribution to stock car racing is hard to measure,” fellow Hall of Famer Dale Earnhardt Jr. said on Twitter. “His ambitious vision created growth and opportunities that I am forever thankful for. My heart is with the Smith family.”

Inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame in 2016, Smith will be remembered for building world-class palaces of speed, being the first to install lights at a speedway (Charlotte in 1992), creating memorable pre-race shows, building condominiums at racetracks and being the first to sell naming rights to a speedway — among other things.

“I’ve met American Presidents and scholars. Astronauts and artists. World-famous musicians and athletes. But the greatest man I ever met was Bruton Smith,” said Eddie Gossage, who built Texas Motor Speedway with Smith in the 1990s. “For whatever reason, he saw something in me (and) blessed me with the opportunity to join him in building one of the largest stadiums in the world. We had so much fun working together. He always treated me like an equal as he taught me lessons about business and life.”

Those who got to be around Smith during his prime will recall the clashes where he willingly sparred with everyone and anyone who didn’t see progress the same way he did. And looking back now, many of Smith’s ideas — considered outlandish in the moment — proved to be ahead of his time and were later incorporated into NASCAR.

For example: During the 2007 NASCAR preseason media tour, Smith used his session with reporters to call for an increased emphasis on winning.

“Winning has to be the most important thing,” he said. “We have to emphasize winning over points. I’m sick and tired of a driver getting out of the car and saying how pleased he is to finish fourth. Pleased? He’s the third loser.”

Now? A single win earns a berth into NASCAR’s playoffs, making victories more important than ever before in NASCAR’s history.

In 2012, Smith suggested races have mandatory cautions to break up long green-flag periods — an idea that was greeted with ridicule from the drivers (and was directly shot down by NASCAR president Mike Helton at the time).

“You can’t just sit there with nothing happening,” Smith said. “It ruins the event. It’s damaging to our sport.

“If you have one (caution) every 20 laps, I don’t care. It adds to the show. Someone once said we’re in show business. Well, if we’re in show business, let’s deliver that show.”

Now? NASCAR implemented stages (with at least two mandatory cautions) for every race starting in 2017.

“There have been many great men in this sport but very few visionaries,” Kyle Petty, who drove in over 800 Cup series races from 1979 to 2008, said on Twitter. “Today we lost one of the greatest visionaries that racing ever had. Bruton’s impact on the sport will continue to be felt for decades to come.”

Smith also called for NASCAR to stop fining drivers for confrontations and harsh comments (“Don’t sanitize everything. … Let them say what they want without taking points away”) and said NASCAR should embrace controversy (“We’ve had huge publicity all week,” he said after the infamous Richmond “Spingate” in 2013).

The penchant for showmanship came early. Growing up on a North Carolina farm during the Great Depression, Smith decided he hated being poor and started promoting races by his early 20s.

He and Curtis Turner are credited with building Charlotte Motor Speedway, but Smith was said to have forced Turner out of their partnership when things went sour. The track was not a success to start with, and Smith himself ended up losing ownership of the facility after financial trouble.

Smith turned to the car sales business instead and eventually started buying back shares of the racetrack for cheap until he regained control. That was the start of his racetrack empire, which expanded as he emphasized the fan experience.

Smith didn’t always get it right and sometimes missed the mark with his big ideas. But his rivalry with the France family spurred both parties to make stock car racing better in their own way — and by the time the two companies found common ground over the last decade, it was clear all of NASCAR ended up as the beneficiary.

“Race fans are, and always will be, the lifeblood of NASCAR,” Jim France, NASCAR’s chairman and CEO, said in a statement. “Few knew this truth better than Bruton Smith. Bruton built his race tracks employing a simple philosophy: give race fans memories they will cherish for a lifetime. In doing so, Bruton helped grow NASCAR’s popularity as the preeminent spectator sport.”

(Photo: Mike McCarn, File / AP)