Nevadan at Work: Speedway GM works to keep everybody on same track

Chris Powell and his staff at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway will watch 51 weeks of work -- they take a week off for Christmas -- culminate with today's running of the Kobalt Tools 400 NASCAR race.

It's the most exciting part of the job for Powell, president and general manager of Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

Preparation for the race starts on the Tuesday after last year's race when Powell meets with key employees to determine how to make today's race better, he said.

"NASCAR weekend, seeing it all coming together ... after they sing the 'Star-Spangled Banner' and the jets from Nellis (Air Force Base) fly over and they say, 'Gentlemen, start your engines' ... you just feel such a sense of pride of how hard everybody worked," Powell said as gulped down lunch after a news conference at the speedway media center.

"I'm just a small part. It's people that make up the staff, people that sell the tickets and mail the tickets, people that cut the grass and make the facility look pristine. These people work 52 weeks to be not only the best facility, but the nicest. Not the physical facility, but the attitude of the staff."

Racing runs deep for Powell, 52, a North Carolina native who worked in sports marketing for R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. before taking the job in Las Vegas. At that time, NASCAR ran the Winston Cup series.

Powell, a University of North Carolina graduate, was hired the Las Vegas Motor Speedway's general manager in December 1998, soon after it was acquired by Bruton Smith, chairman of Charlotte, N.C.-based Speedway Motorsports Inc.

Smith bought the track from late casino owners Bill Bennett and Ralph Engelstad for about $215 million, later selling off the 100-acre Speedway Industrial Park to Harsch Investment Properties

Speedway Motorsports also owns Charlotte Motor Speedway; Atlanta Motor Speedway; Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway; Texas Motor Speedway in Dallas-Fort Worth; Kentucky Speedway; New Hampshire Motor Speedway; and Infineon Raceway in Sonoma, Calif.

Question: How did the timing come together for you to come here right after the acquisition?

Answer: I came here with RJR (R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co.) for the first race (in 1998) and it was later that fall that Bruton Smith and Speedway Motorsports acquired the track. In December, I got a call from Mr. Smith about coming to Las Vegas as the general manager. I had worked with Jeff Byrd, the late general manager at Bristol (Tenn.) Speedway, and he recommended me. I owe a lot to Jeff and Bruton.

Question: You brought your wife, Missy, and five sons to Las Vegas from North Carolina, your home state and the heartland of stock car racing. How was that transition?

Answer: There were some challenges at first, not because we were in Las Vegas, but because we were somewhere other than being so close to home in North Carolina. But we loved Las Vegas from the beginning. We were watching TV and they showed a shot of the Strip and Missy said, "Can you believe we're here?" We still have to pinch ourselves to believe we live in Las Vegas.

Question: What does this speedway mean to Las Vegas?

Answer: The speedway brings upward of 1,400 event-days a year here because we have multiple tracks. We had a car manufacturer do its world meeting here. They brought in 3,000 people from across the world. That means hotel rooms, dinners, shows. Certainly NASCAR weekend is the major attraction, but there's so much other stuff going on here -- local racing at the Bullring and (drag) Strip, driving schools, two national events for the NHRA (National Hot Rod Association). We bring in hundreds of millions of dollars in economic impact. It makes it easier for hotels to sell rooms and meals. Transportation and retail benefits, gaming benefits. We hire people. We'll have 4,500 people employed here for the race. The list goes on and on.

Question: What does Las Vegas do for the speedway?

Answer: The impact is felt throughout the year because we're able to sell more tickets because of our location in the entertainment capital of the world. You talk to anyone in NASCAR promotions, they're extremely jealous of NASCAR in Vegas. They don't have what we have downtown and on the Strip. Race fans know when they come to Las Vegas, they're going to get great racing at a great facility, and they also know what this town has to offer -- world-class hotels and world-class entertainment. The hotels know there are people who'll be back at the tables later in the afternoon. So the city provides a landscape that makes it much easier to sell tickets.

Question: What are some of your business goals at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway? Have you been able to increase revenue from sources other than NASCAR?

Answer: We have revenue goals, but we can't discuss (them) publicly. One of our goals is what we call nontraditional revenue that we bring in, whether it's concerts or any track rental that we can put in place. A perfect example is the Electric Daisy Carnival that we had last year and it's coming again this year and in the future. It comes in mid-June, a good time. We hit a home run with it. People were worried because of what happened (drug overdose) in Los Angeles. However, we can't forget about our core business, which is racing.

Question: The first couple NASCAR races were traffic disasters. Has that continued to be biggest issue for the race?

Answer: Traffic for NASCAR weekend has become a nonissue. We're challenged by it, trying to get 150,000 people here from the hotels on the Strip, but it's not the story it used to be. The first couple of years, fans didn't know where to come onto the property and where to park. Everybody has gotten familiar with the property over the years. NDOT (Nevada Department of Transportation) and Nevada Highway Patrol all understand when traffic would peak. We widened Las Vegas Boulevard from two to six lanes, and we worked with Nellis Air Force Base to bring buses through the base.

Question: How does enthusiasm for stock car racing in Las Vegas compare with the region you came from?

Answer: It's amazing to me the power of NASCAR and how it's grown through the 1980s and 1990s and 2000s. Perhaps stock car racing is part of the fabric in the South and Southeast, but certainly there are a lot of NASCAR fans in Texas and here and west of Utah. The sport grew up in North Carolina and Tennessee and Virginia. Certainly the passion runs deeper in those parts, but it's not an impediment to sell tickets out here.

Question: What makes you a good speedway general manager? What qualities did you bring to the job?

Answer: That presupposes that I'm good. First and foremost, you've got to listen to race fans and put yourself in their position. How do I want to be treated? And then how do you get your people to treat face fans the way they want to be treated? If the person in front of me is unruly, will the speedway staff do something about it if I notify them? Are the bathrooms clean? Are the toilet seats tight? You've got to get everybody on the same page to be nice to the race fans. Those fans are paying a considerable sum of money to be here. Try to make the experience for them as positive as it can be.

Contact reporter Hubble Smith at hsmith@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0491.