Auto Racing Capsules: Gridlock at Ky.'s Sprint Cup race gets political

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — Kentucky’s long-awaited entry into NASCAR’s top series veered into the fast lane of statewide politics Monday after a massive traffic jam during the weekend event left some irate fans stuck in their cars listening to the race on radio.

Republican gubernatorial candidate David Williams referred to the gridlock that stretched for miles Saturday night as a “debacle” and a national embarrassment for the state.

Williams, president of the Kentucky Senate, called for legislative hearings to review the traffic predicament that put a big public relations dent in the race at Kentucky Speedway, near Interstate 71 between Louisville and Cincinnati in northern Kentucky.

“I sympathize with the angry people who didn’t get in; I was one of them,” Williams said in a statement.

Williams campaign adviser Scott Jennings said Williams was stuck in traffic for six hours trying to get to the race.

Gov. Steve Beshear, who traveled to the speedway by helicopter, has touted the coveted Sprint Cup race as an economic boon. Beshear’s support also connected him with a popular sport in Kentucky. Speedway officials and their supporters have been pushing for years to get a Sprint Cup race in Kentucky.

Beshear, a Democrat, said Monday that traffic flow was among significant issues to be resolved before next year’s race. Beshear said he was putting together a team of transportation, tourism and state police officials to meet with local and track leaders to make improvements. Beshear spokeswoman Kerri Richardson said the team will be convened in the next few days.

“I want to make sure local and track officials have what they need to best manage future events,” Beshear said in a statement.

Richardson said the governor traveled to and from the speedway by helicopter because he performed ceremonial roles during the day that required him to arrive several hours before the race.

More than 100,000 packed into the track’s grandstand for the race. But some fans never made it, getting stuck in the bottleneck stretching along I-71 and a state highway that serves as a main artery to the speedway. Frustrated ticketholders lit up social network sites to vent their anger at missing all or part of the event.

David Pryor, a fan from Middletown, Ohio, said he and his wife made it to their seats in time to watch the final 20 laps or so, after parking their vehicle on the road and walking about three miles to the track.

“Basically got to walk in, sit there for 15 minutes and then walk back out,” he said. “It was the worst experience I’ve ever had in my life as far as racing goes. It was just ridiculous.”

Pryor put the blame on insufficient parking at the track. He spent about $300 for two tickets that included a hospitality package for food and drinks at the track that he and his wife never got to enjoy.

The experience hasn’t soured him on NASCAR, but he vowed to bypass Kentucky Speedway from now on.

“I’ll pretty much drive to any track before I’ll drive back to Kentucky,” he said. “They were just so unprepared.”

The state said before the race that the speedway could accommodate about 33,000 vehicles in its parking lots.

Kentucky Speedway general manager Mark Simendinger on Monday apologized to fans who missed the race or endured “challenging conditions” to reach the track.

“We’re committed to working with NASCAR, state and local officials and traffic experts to address Saturday’s traffic issues to ensure that we never have this type of experience again,” he said in a statement.

Marcus Smith, president and chief operating officer of Speedway Motorsports Inc., which owns and operates Kentucky Speedway, said fans who missed the race will still have a chance to use their tickets. Speedway Motorsports will honor those tickets at any remaining 2011 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race at one of its facilities or at next year’s Sprint Cup race at Kentucky Speedway, he said.

“I feel terrible for the fans that had a bad experience at Kentucky Speedway and we are asking that they give us a chance to make it up to them,” Smith said in a statement.

Since 1998, the state has pumped $87.7 million in state and federal highway funds into transportation improvements near the speedway, said Transportation Cabinet spokesman Chuck Wolfe. Projects included widening a stretch of I-71 near the track, building a new interchange and a new road leading fans to the track and expanding another major road near the track.

Leading up to the racing, state transportation officials temporarily suspended highway construction work along I-71 to enable northbound and southbound lanes to operate at full capacity.

Meanwhile, Williams said he was seeking legislative hearings in September, which he said would give state government and track officials time to reflect on what happened and to prepare to face questions from lawmakers.

“The most important thing is that we figure out what happened and make it better next time,” Williams said.

It’s too late for Kentucky Speedway to apologize

Sometimes saying sorry is all it takes to make people feel a little better.

That might have been the case with Kentucky Speedway, if the apology had been immediate and sincere.

But to the thousands of fans who spent hours snarled in traffic, congestion so bad that many never made it to their seats for Saturday night’s inaugural Sprint Cup race, the two words they long for — “We’re sorry” — would probably fall on deaf ears.

Track general manager Mark Simendinger probably thought he had the apology covered in a Sunday night statement, his second since the massive traffic jam spoiled what was supposed to be a spectacular debut for Kentucky Speedway.

“Kentucky Speedway regrets the traffic conditions,” Simendinger wrote, and since regret means remorse, maybe that should have been enough. It wasn’t, though, and frustrated fans took to social media to blast the track and parent company Speedway Motorsports Inc. for ducking the two words everyone wanted to hear.

“When I realized they hadn’t said it, I wondered, ‘Why haven’t they apologized?”’ fan Jen Morrison said Monday. “I bet a lot of people are wondering that. It seems like such a simple thing to say, and it could really go a long way. But they didn’t say it, probably because they don’t want to say it’s their fault.”

By Monday afternoon, the track had indeed quietly apologized by updating Simendinger’s statement on its website. The word “regrets” had been replaced by “apologizes.”

Finally, an official apology came along with a ticket exchange offer good for any SMI track this season, and the race at Kentucky next year.

“To those fans that were not able to attend the (race), we offer our sincerest apologies,” Simendinger said. “We’d also like to apologize to all of our fans who endured challenging conditions during our event weekend.”

It didn’t soften the blow for Morrison, a 28-year-old who works on social media for CMT in Nashville.

She returned to her family home in Hamilton, Ohio, last weekend with plans to attend the race. As she headed toward Cincinnati early Saturday, she saw a line of cars backed up 15 miles going in the direction of the race track. She called her dad and told him he should get on the road, which he did 30 minutes later.

He made it to the track at 6:40 p.m., some six hours after he began the drive that typically takes one hour and 15 minutes. But Morrison waited for her brother to get off from work, and they didn’t start their journey until 3:30 p.m. Even though they knew a back way to the track, they accepted that they’d miss the 7:45 green flag start.

They missed a lot more than that. After navigating traffic for more than five hours, they got to the gate an hour after the race had started.

“The cop just shrugged and said, ‘Sorry, no parking,’ and turned us away,” Morrison said.

The paid lots they had passed were full, she said, and they believed their only option was to get back onto the interstate to go back to a paid lot they had earlier bypassed.

“But that would have meant crossing the road and walking 3-to-4 miles to the track. There was no point,” she said.

Morrison, who has attended races at Bristol, Indianapolis and Talladega, is no stranger to bad race traffic. But she said she wouldn’t be going back to Kentucky, regardless of what the track does to potentially make it right.

The olive branch from SMI came Monday from president and CEO Marcus Smith, who said fans with unused tickets can exchange them.

“We felt like this was a situation we wanted to roll out all the stops, and go above and beyond,” said Smith, who believes the track did not have enough shuttles running from remote lots, hotels and malls to help lessen the number of cars heading to the track.

“The traffic was anticipated. We knew it was going to be bad and we have been saying for a couple of years that we need more roads. And we did make plans, the plans just clearly didn’t work,” Smith said.

“We don’t want to point fingers and make excuses, but in hindsight, there are a lot of things we have to do differently.”

There were other issues that needed to be acknowledged. Fans who did make it inside the gates complained about concession stands running out of food and water, and others said there were long lines for the bathrooms, which some deemed dirty and short on toilet paper. The first sign of trouble actually came Thursday, when spotters complained the elevator that took them to the roof was out of order.

Smith said the traffic issue created a “domino effect” and many track workers assigned to areas such as concessions were stuck in the congestion and unable to get to work on time.

Still, there’s no denying that traffic was always going to be a problem. A July 1 press release from The Kentucky Transportation Cabinet that touted the traffic patterns set for Saturday night even noted near the bottom that “Kentucky Speedway is able to accommodate approximately 33,000 vehicles in its 10 parking lots.”

Track owner Bruton Smith’s addition of 40,000 seats had made it a 107,000-seat speedway, and all the seats sold a week before the race.

Clearly there was going to be a shortage, and everyone seemed to know it ahead of time. Even Smith, who spent millions on improving infrastructure since buying the speedway in 2008, acknowledged it Friday when he joked that track officials “expect to have everyone home by Tuesday.”

His crack maybe drew a laugh or two when he made it, but it’s not funny now, not for Morrison and her brother, who are out $85 each on tickets, or any other fans who were inconvenienced by the traffic woes.

Smith estimated during the race that 20,000 fans failed to make it into the speedway during the event, but that number was likely exaggerated as Smith will now fight with the state for the funds to improve the roads surrounding the speedway. Smith and his SMI group are the best in the business at promoting races, and their facilities are top notch.

Texas Motor Speedway president Eddie Gossage had similar traffic woes during his track’s inaugural Cup race. SMI and the speedway addressed the issues, and the track is now among the best in NASCAR.

“I talked to Bruton on Saturday and he was just sick as he could be about the traffic, but at that point, what can you do?” Gossage said Monday. “Now you just go forward. Our company always fixes things. We never, ever, ever ignore them.”

Fixing things going forward will improve Kentucky, but it may never convince some of the fans from Saturday night to return. It doesn’t change the fact that Kentucky, after a 10-year wait to get onto the Sprint Cup schedule, just wasn’t ready for prime time.

-- JENNA FRYER

Kentucky Speedway offers ticket exchange to fans

Kentucky Speedway on Monday offered a ticket exchange to fans who were stuck in traffic and missed the inaugural Sprint Cup Series race.

Speedway Motorsports Inc. president Marcus Smith said fans can swap their unused Kentucky tickets for entry into events at any 2011 race at an SMI track. The tickets can also be swapped for entry into the 2012 race at Kentucky.

“We felt like this was a situation we wanted to roll out all the stops, and go above and beyond,” Smith told The Associated Press. “All the plans we made and all the effort we put forth didn’t produce the results we wanted, and we want to try our best to make it right with fans who are understandably frustrated.”

Fans were stuck in traffic for hours as they tried to get into Saturday night’s race at the track in Sparta, Ky. Many fans said once they did get to the gate, they were turned away by police because the track had no more parking spaces. The track announced a week before the race that it had sold out all of its 107,000 seats for a Cup race the region had been hoping to host for more at least a decade.

SMI spent millions on capital improvement and updating the infrastructure to the speedway, which was acquired in 2008. Smith said speedway officials in hindsight needed far more shuttles running from remote lots, malls and hotels to reduce the number of cars heading into the speedway.

“The traffic was anticipated. We knew it was going to be bad. We have been saying for a couple of years we need more roads,” he said. “We did make plans, the plans clearly didn’t work. We don’t want to point fingers and make excuses, but in hindsight, there are a lot of things we have to do differently.

“There were tens of millions of dollars spent on parking lots and trying to make it better for the fans, and it’s really frustrating that it wasn’t enough.”

The SMI ticket exchange offer also came with a firm apology from both Smith and general manager Mark Simendinger. It was the first apology offered in three statements from the speedway.

“To those fans that were not able to attend the Quaker State 400, we offer our sincerest apologies,” Simendinger said in a statement. “We’d also like to apologize to all of our fans who endured challenging conditions during our event weekend. As we said earlier, we’re committed to working with NASCAR, state and local officials and traffic experts to address Saturday’s traffic issues to ensure that we never have this type of experience again.”

Meantime, rival tracks are pouncing on the opportunity to take shots at Kentucky and SMI.

The president of Talladega Superspeedway on Sunday assured fans “his staff is well prepared to handle the influx of more than 100,000” at the track’s October race, and Michigan International Speedway president Roger Curtis said the Kentucky problems hurt all track operators.

“As a track promoter, I am saddened and embarrassed about what happened this weekend ... that speedway, having been open for racing since 2000, should have known the challenges it would face when it tripled in size,” Curtis wrote in a blog Monday.

“It appears the mentality at some other racetracks today is to see how much money they can make off a fan. Their line of thinking is to ban coolers, have fire sales on last-minute tickets, build, build, build without thinking, thinking, thinking, and blame others for their mistakes.”

Indianapolis Motor Speedway, meanwhile, said fans who present a Kentucky ticket can receive free track admission on Friday, July 29, or $5 admission on Saturday, July 30. Kentucky ticketholders can also park for free in designated IMS lots.

“We have easy, efficient access to and from the track that allows our fans to participate in activities at the track and, in just a matter of minutes, enjoy all that the city of Indianapolis has to offer or be well on the road toward home or the hotel,” said IMS president Jeff Belskus, who contrasted Kentucky’s remote location.

Smith declined to comment directly on the comments from his rivals, but said SMI prides itself in top notch facilities with continued focus on capital improvements and creating outstanding fan experiences.

“It’s heartbreaking when something like this happens, and you hope people give you some grace and the benefit of the doubt,” Smith said.

Greg Biffle gets new crew chief for No. 16 Ford

CONCORD, N.C. (AP) — Roush Fenway Racing has named Matt Puccia crew chief for Greg Biffle beginning with this weekend’s race at New Hampshire.

Puccia will replace Greg Erwin as crew chief of the No. 16 Ford. He has been with the organization since 2004, most recently in the research and development program.

Puccia had previously been crew chief for Paul Menard in the Nationwide Series last season.

Erwin had been Biffle’s crew chief since May, 2007. He led Biffle to five wins and three appearances in the Chase for the Sprint Cup championship. The team says it will announce his new role with the organization at a later date.

Biffle is currently 14th in the Sprint Cup standings with five top-10 finishes this season.