Bahre: Sale is inevitable

By Michael Vega and Fluto Shinzawa, Globe Staff  |  September 17, 2007

LOUDON, N.H. - Amid reports Fenway Sports Group, a 50-50 partner in the Roush Fenway Racing team, had expressed an interest in purchasing his track, Bob Bahre, the 80-year-old chairman of New Hampshire International Speedway, predicted after yesterday's Sylvania 300 that his 1.058-mile oval "some day will be sold."

Citing one reason to sell, Bahre said his 44-year-old son Gary, NHIS's president, would not be interested in carrying on with the track after his passing.

"Gary doesn't want it, I'll tell anybody that; Gary does not want it at all," Bahre said. "I'm going to be 81 Feb. 19th, and you know, like I've said before, if I had died on Friday, he would've sold it before the race today.

"So some day it's going to have to be sold, but I love it myself, personally," Bahre added.

NHIS officials announced that the crowd of 101,000 marked the track's 26th consecutive sellout. NHIS's strong attendance, coupled with its two pivotal dates on the NASCAR's Nextel Cup schedule, has made it an attractive target of a number of suitors who have long circled Loudon, looking for their opportunity to pounce.

Would now be the time?

"Someday when it's sold, it's never going to move from here," said Bahre, who in 1996 acquired his second Nextel Cup date when he purchased half of North Wilkesboro (N.C.) Speedway with O. Bruton Smith, chairman of Speedway Motorsports Inc. "This has always been racing country, not just New Hampshire but New England. It'll always be run as a race track, but you just hope that whoever bought it would keep both dates here. I'd certainly want to see the dates stay here."

Moving backward

It has been a humbling first Cup season for Toyota, and yesterday's race was no different for the Japanese manufacturer.

David Reutimann was the highest-placing Toyota driver, finishing in 26th place. A.J. Allmendinger took 33d, and Dave Blaney, the pole-sitter for July's Lenox Industrial Tools 300 at New Hampshire International Speedway, spun twice and limped back to the garage with a 35th-place showing. Brian Vickers rounded out the field with a 43d-place finish.

Fellow Toyota drivers Dale Jarrett, Jeremy Mayfield, and Michael Waltrip failed to qualify for the race.

"It may not feel like it right now, because I'm pretty frustrated and ill about how bad we were," Allmendinger said. "But running these races and being that bad, that's how you get better because you figure out what's wrong."

Keeping it clean

For the first time since 1998, when NASCAR introduced the 43-car field, every vehicle completed yesterday's race. There were seven caution flags for 27 laps, but no significant wrecks in the race, which ran in a brisk 2 hours 52 minutes 32 seconds . . . Denny Hamlin finished 15th, snapping a string of six straight top-10 NHIS runs, including a checkered flag in the July race . . . In his final NHIS appearance piloting the No. 8 Budweiser Chevrolet, Dale Earnhardt Jr. finished 16th, staying on the lead lap despite a spin on Lap 180. "We had a really good car at the beginning of the race," Earnhardt said. "Then we kind of out-thought ourselves on the adjustments and the car just went away. It got so loose I couldn't hang onto it and I spun it out." . . . Matt Kenseth (seventh) was the lone Roush Fenway Racing car in the top 10. Team owner John Henry was in attendance.