LOUDON, N.H. – Bob Bahre is still involved with the speedway he built.

The former owner of Oxford Plains Speedway, who left Oxford to construct New Hampshire International Speedway in 1989, sold NHIS to Bruton Smith for $340 million last November.

It is now called New Hampshire Motor Speedway.

Bahre is currently helping Smith, NHMS executive vice president and general manager Jerry Gappens and their staff make the transition.

Bahre said selling the track “was the right thing to do at the right time. Naturally, I still miss it a lot. But I’m 81, my son [Gary] worked with me all the time and my brother, Dick, is pretty sick now. This was the time to do it.”

He feels he has left it in good hands. Smith owns six other Sprint Cup tracks.

“He was the right guy for it, to be honest with you,” said Bahre. “He’s a decent man. All the people he sent up here are good people.”

“Naturally, he’ll do a few things differently than I did. That’s human nature. If you sold your house, the new owner might paint it a color you don’t like,” added Bahre. “Luckily, everything went well.”

Bahre had a chance to reflect on his career at NHIS.

“I had always planned on it. When I had Oxford years ago, I always wanted to have something like this,” said Bahre. “I didn’t think it would quite as big as this, in all honesty. When it started, it had 55,000 seats and I thought that was good. But we kept adding and adding to it. We were awful lucky.

“But, you know, we built it but the fans made it. I get all the credit, but the credit should go to the fans, not to me. If we didn’t have the fans, we’d have nothing.”

Bahre, who owned OPS from 1964-86, said fans shouldn’t worry about Smith giving up one of the two Sprint Cup dates to another track.

“A lot of people think he’s going to take a date out of there, but he won’t. I know damned well he won’t. That would be foolish with everything going the way that it is. Why move?” said Bahre.

Bahre will stay busy. He has plenty of ventures in addition to helping Smith and his staff.

“I’ve still got my real estate [business]. I have a few shopping centers and some properties we lease out. And we have a bunch of apartments. I’ll be busy enough. But I’m going to still be helping here, if they want me,” said Bahre.

IRL race being sought for NHMS

Gappens said he is optimistic that NHMS has landed an Indy Racing League event for next year.

“We’re pretty sure on that. We’ll know definitively in the next week or so,” said Gappens. “We’re pushing hard for that. They’ve got to work around going to Japan [for a race]. That’s the only roadblock at this point.”

Track owner Smith said if they don’t land a race next season, he has no desire to try to procure one in future years.

Gappens said Sunday morning that their first race weekend “exceeded expectations.”

“It has been a great weekend. There’s a good comfort level. Fans have given us some really good feedback on some of the improvements we’ve already made and have started to make and that makes me feel good, too. Things like the [new] signage and the trams. Everybody likes the new trams,” said Gappens. “We’ve done some paving. We’ve widened some things. I think it has raised the bar a little bit on the atmosphere and their experience.”

“It’s nice to hear that work is paying off,” added Gappens.

As for the track itself, Gappens has talked to four veteran drivers to receive their input on the 1.058-mile oval.

“Two want us to keep it like it is and two say to put a little banking in it,” said Gappens. “The one thing I can promise is that the track won’t be any bigger [longer] than it is.

“That’s something Bruton was speaking about earlier [at a press conference]. He really wanted to come this weekend and watch the racing first-hand and take it in.”

“He’s got engineers and people working on different designs. But he really wanted to see [the racing] this weekend before he got a direction he wanted to go in,” added Gappens.

Gappens said they are cognizant of the importance of NHMS since it is the only Sprint Cup oval in the Northeast.

There is a race at Watkins Glen (N.Y.), but it is a road course.

“It’s very important with the market it’s located in… a six-state area. That’s one of the reasons he wanted to buy it,” said Gappens.

Kurt Busch enjoys NHMS

Count Kurt Busch, winner of Sunday’s rain-shortened Lenox Industrials Tools 301, among those drivers who enjoy racing at NHMS.

“I like the racetrack,” said Busch. “I like how there’s different lanes to choose from, whether it’s the low lane, the middle or even the upper lane. And each lane has a different banking. If your race car can cut across the low part of the racetrack and stick to the bottom, I think that pays dividends and helps you move forward when everybody else is struggling with their tight-handling cars.”

Busch has had his share of success at NHMS with three Sprint Cup wins and six top-10 finishes among his 16 races.

Modified race was a gem

The best race of the weekend was the New England 100 Whelen Modified feature on Saturday with Chuck Hossfeld literally nosing out Ted Christopher by .001 of a second.

The two had swapped the lead several times over the last 10 laps.

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