Track's $1.7M gamble on lighting smashing success

In the 50 years since it was conceived and built, Lowe's Motor Speedway has witnessed the evolution of stock-car racing from a regional sport to a national phenomenon. Although the cars, drivers and teams have changed throughout the years, the one constant that remains is Ollen Bruton Smith. It is impossible to write about the history of one without mentioning the other, as they are inextricably linked.

Bruton remembers

It seems fitting that for the 50th running of the 600-mile race at his track, Bruton Smith would take a look back.

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The youngest of nine children, Smith was born in 1927 in Oakboro, N.C., a rural community east of Charlotte. He saw his first race as a young boy and immediately was hooked by the sport.

"The first race I saw was when my dad and older brother took me to the old Charlotte Fairgrounds," Smith said in a 2005 interview. "I was about 8 years old -- and man it was exciting. Unbelievable! And from then on, I've loved racing, absolutely loved it."

Early on, Smith fancied himself as a driver -- and claims to have beaten Buck Baker and Joe Weatherly in one race -- but his mother, and a higher deity, quickly put an end to that dream.

"When I was 17, I bought a race car and decided to be a professional driver," Smith said. "But my mother had another idea. She had been asking me not to race and then she started fighting dirty. She started praying I would stop. You can't fight your mom and God, so I stopped driving."

Shortly thereafter, Smith began selling used cars in the front yard of his house and began helping to promote races at a nearby dirt track in Midland. By the time he was 23, he was running the National Stock Car Racing Association, basically going head-to-head with Bill France's fledgling NASCAR.

"Mr. France wanted me to meet and have dinner," Smith recalled in a 2003 Car and Driver article. "This was 1950. He wasn't making any money. Neither was anybody. We were just getting by. So he and I met for dinner. He wanted me to support a merger. I was so doggone young, I didn't know anything about merging or anything like that. But it didn't sound like a bad idea."

But Uncle Sam had other plans. In early 1951, Smith was drafted and spent two years in the Army as a paratrooper. By the time he returned to civilian life, NASCAR had acquired a stranglehold, and for the past six decades, Smith has had a sometimes contentious -- but ultimately highly profitable -- relationship with the France family.

By the mid-'50s, Smith had turned down an offer to work at a local hosiery mill and instead eked out a living promoting races all around the Charlotte area, including the Fairgrounds. At the same time Curtis Turner announced plans to build a superspeedway in the area, Smith came to the realization that the true money was in ownership.

"I was promoting three to four races per week at various facilities in the region, which I didn't own," Smith said. "Everything regarding these promotional efforts centered on my effort, and if I got in a wreck or was laid up for six months I'd be totally broke. I had no security. I decided Charlotte needed a serious speedway."

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The two joined forces and within 11 months, Charlotte Motor Speedway hosted its first race. But despite success on the track, Smith struggled to generate a positive cash flow to pay back the shareholders. The speedway was soon forced to file for bankruptcy, a court-appointed trustee was brought in and Smith was fired. And when the track was finally returned to the control of the shareholders, Smith was denied a seat on the executive board.

Now on the outside looking in, Smith devoted his time to building another business: selling cars. He purchased a Ford dealership in Illinois, which would eventually grow into what is now Sonic Automotive, a network of close to 200 dealerships and 50 auto repair facilities concentrated in the South and Southwest.

But Smith's main focus remained on regaining control of the speedway, and as his fortune grew, he began quietly buying up shares of stock. By 1975, Smith owned 82 percent of the outstanding shares, more than enough to regain control of the day-to-day operations. He hired Humpy Wheeler as general manager, and embarked upon a bold plan to make the speedway something much more than just a place to hold races twice a year.

"We knew if we could ever fix up a track to be as nice as a modern stadium, this sport would be three or four times as big," Smith told Sports Illustrated in 1999. "We didn't know it would be 10 times as big."

With Smith's foresight and under Wheeler's direction, the speedway added a number of enhancements, including grandstand expansion, restaurants, landscaping and corporate suites. A condominium was erected outside the first turn. And in 1992, Smith and Wheeler did what seemed to be unthinkable at the time: they decided to add lights to allow for night racing.

The idea of NASCAR's premier series racing under the lights may not seem innovative now, but back then, finding a way to light a 1.5-mile superspeedway without creating glare or shadows for the drivers at 180 mph -- or blocking fans' views with light poles -- required a huge leap in the technology of the day. The speedway found a company willing to take on the project, Musco Lighting of Iowa, and spent $1.7 million on the project.

Engineers created a system of reflectors and mirrors that projected light from nearly 1,800 fixtures on the speedway's grandstands and infield onto the racing surface. None other than Dale Earnhardt was chosen to test the new lighting system on April 15, 1992, with Smith himself hitting the switch to light the speedway in front of 38,000 fascinated spectators.

The Winston all-star race the next month -- promoted as One Hot Night -- would be the first real test of whether Smith's grandiose plans would ultimately be a hit or a miss. And after a packed house of 133,500 witnessed a finish-line wreck involving Davey Allison and Kyle Petty, the lights were deemed a smashing success.

"I was wearing my sunglasses out there," Geoff Bodine said. "That's how bright it was ... and I'd like to see more.

"You can see the sparks. You can see things you can't see in the daytime. You can see the cars a lot better and it makes them look like they're going 100 mph faster than what they're going in the daytime."

"I think the lights add to the action," Ricky Rudd added. "The track stays tacky and the cars stick good. You can do more side-by-side racing."

Nearly every superspeedway since then has been built with, or has added, a lighting system similar to the one at Lowe's Motor Speedway.

"Nothing that we have done here since the speedway was built has had the impact as the lights did," Wheeler said.

In following years, Smith added to his collection of tracks, buying Atlanta, Bristol, New Hampshire and Infineon Raceway, and building new facilities in Texas and Las Vegas. In 1994, Smith founded Speedway Motorsports, and one year later, took the corporation public with a $68 million initial public offering of shares.

Now one of the nation's richest men, Smith continues to maintain control of his vast racing empire, but hopes that he'll someday be remembered as someone who loved the sport of auto racing and did his best to promote it in the best way possible.

"I like seeing positive reports on what I've been able to do in helping move the sport to where it is today," Smith said. "It makes me feel really good that the drivers, car owners and fans are complimentary about what I've been able to accomplish."

GREAT MOMENTS IN CHARLOTTE HISTORY
Monday, May 11: Financial gamble pays off for 'greatest driver alive'
Tuesday, May 12: Pearson career soars after Dieringer contract dispute
Wednesday, May 13: NASCAR loses one of its stars in 1964 World 600
Thursday, May 14: Earnhardt's LMS debut a modest 22nd-place finish
Friday, May 15: Wheeler's legacy created in three decades at Lowe's
Monday, May 18: Guthrie opens NASCAR to a whole new World in 1976
Tuesday, May 19: Petty scores controversial win at Charlotte in 1983
Wednesday, May 20: Waltrip loses race, gains friends in '89 The Winston
Thursday, May 21: A career is born thanks to impressive LMS victories