The $3.7M worth of road improvements from the state of Kentucky and $8-10M from Kentucky Speedway Owner SMI “will help prevent a repeat of the traffic backup” experienced during last year’s inaugural NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Quaker State 400, according to Scott Wartman of the CINCINNATI ENQUIRER. More than 13,000 fans missed the race as traffic backed up onto Interstate 71 in ’11. Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear “toured the improvements to the track” yesterday morning and said, “Do expect some delays, because as I mentioned there’s gonna be delays at any Sprint Cup Race anywhere in the country. But I believe with all the improvements the state has made and all the improvements in parking that the speedway has made, that whatever delays will be very reasonable that any NASCAR fan would expect when you are trying to get 100,000 people into one place on race day” (CINCINNATI ENQUIRER, 6/12). Beshear said of the road improvements, “It’s a very small investment that the commonwealth is making for a very large return” (AP, 6/11). Kentucky Speedway GM Mark Simendinger said, “People ask me if I’m nervous. Well, I’m not nervous, I’m anxious. You know how long I’ve been waiting to show what we’ve done to fix this?” (KENTUCKY.com, 6/9).
APPROACHING A SELLOUT: Simendinger yesterday said that ticket sales “have picked up” for the Quaker State 400 on June 30. He said, “We’re hoping that we’re going to get to a sellout, but we’ve still got a little ways to go. That’s why we’re pushing as hard as we are” (CINCINATTI.com, 6/11). Simendinger said, “We're very confident things are going to be good. We're going to have a very, very good crowd. It's going to be approaching a sellout of 107,000 tickets. I hope we get there." He added that his confidence “is based on the changes made, the hiring of a new parking firm and extensive computer modeling that's been done on various traffic scenarios” (WCPO.com, 6/11).
