Ending a decade long quest, it appears that Kentucky Speedway will finally get a Sprint Cup race beginning in 2011. Formal announcement of the award of the race to the track is likely to be made at a press conference scheduled for Tuesday by the track's owner, Speedway Motorsports, Inc.'s (TRK) Chairman O. Bruton Smith.
The race is likely to be moved from one of SMI's existing tracks, with the most likely tracks being Atlanta or New Hampshire, both of which currently have two races on the Sprint Cup calendar. The kentucky Speedway was built with the idea of landing a Sprint Cup race but the original owners were never able to achieve their goal. In fact, that ownership group filed a federal antitrust suit against NASCAR for its refusal to consider granting the Speedway a race. SMI bought the track in December, 2008, when it became increasingly apparent that NASCAR was not going to deal with the existing ownership group and that the litigation was not going in its favor. SMI, which owns seven tracks hosting one or more Sprint Cup races (not including Kentucky) clearly had a much better relationship with the France family than did Kentucky Speedway's original ownership group, but even so, SMI was forced to wait until the antitrust case was resolved.
