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Bruton's gamble

LAS VEGAS – One day after a $27 million improvement program for Las Vegas Motor Speedway was announced, track owner Bruton Smith strode into the LVMS media center Tuesday afternoon with a coy smile upon his face.

That he wants to increase capacity and sell more tickets for the lone Nextel Cup event LVMS now hosts in early March is no secret.

Nor is it a surprise that he also hopes to have a second Cup race at LVMS someday soon.

But why spend that kind of money if he has no assurances NASCAR ever will award him that elusive second Vegas race?

Part of the answer to those questions came when Smith said he wants to make LVMS the Taj Mahal of the racing world.

"This speedway should be the No. 1 speedway in the world, so this is going to be the first giant step to make this the No. 1 speedway in the world," Smith said. "We're going to spend a lot of money here.

"There's so many things going for the race fan and the speedway here. It's the entertainment capital of the world," he continued. "There'll be a lot more things coming. Let's say 'film at 11.' There will be more announcements in March [during the Cup race weekend]."

Smith plans to make an offer in the coming days to purchase drag racing's top sanctioning body, the National Hot Rod Association, and relocate it to Las Vegas. He's also trying to woo the Indy Racing League back to LVMS for a second try at success there.

But when I asked Smith whether the $27 million in improvements were just the tip of the iceberg for even bigger plans, Smith promptly dropped an absolute bombshell.

He wants to spend $300 million to make LVMS the Luxor, Palms, Mandalay Bay and Bellagio of stock car racing.

In just two years.

At first, we thought Smith was pulling our legs. One reporter jokingly asked if Smith was thinking about putting a dome over LVMS, to which Smith curtly replied "no."

When pressed further about $300 million proclamation, it became clear that Smith was dead serious. But spending that amount of money – he could build a brand new race track for less than that – on a facility that is just 10 years old leads one to think that Smith has a plan.

He is on the hunt.

"Would I add a date somewhere and where would I take one away?" Smith asked. "Certainly, I'd add a date in Vegas. Where I'd take it away from, I'm not going to tell you because that's going to create a lot of controversy, so I'm not going to tell you where we would take it from."

It's not a stretch to think that Smith's Speedway Motorsports Inc. could buy an existing race track that hosts two Cup races each year – perhaps even doing so in partnership with NASCAR's International Speedway Corp. track ownership arm – and do some serious schedule juggling in the next year or two. After all, several race dates have changed locations in recent years after such track purchases.

While the following is just hypothesizing, there are some interesting potential scenarios:

Consider that Pocono Raceway has been rumored to be on the block for the last couple of years. While once a great race track, Pocono is in need of major renovations to make it a premier facility once again.

SMI and ISC could partner up like they did in their recent joint acquisition the Action Performance Inc. souvenir and memorabilia manufacturer and buy Pocono – not so much for the property itself but for something much more valuable: its two race dates.

The ISC-owned California Speedway might then give up its February race – which suffered from poor ticket sales – to Las Vegas, which theoretically could have the date become a late-season Chase event.

If LVMS gets a second race courtesy of Fontana, and if the ISC/SMI partnership purchases Pocono Raceway, it frees up the opportunity for Pocono to lose one of its two race dates to an ISC track – possibly in the Northwest market NASCAR has been drooling over or in New York City when NASCAR eventually moves into that area by 2010 or so.

"Whatever we do should be good for the sport," Smith said. "If we never lose sight of that, then NASCAR loves us even more every day. ... And I think when you see what we're going to do, I think you'll agree it's going to be good for the sport."

And whatever it is they are going to do, it's going to be a whopper, for sure.

We'll find out just what that whopper is in about six weeks.