Marcus Smith, the son of visionary track operator Bruton Smith and current president and CEO of Speedway Motorsports, has never been afraid to take risks.
As the president and CEO of an organization that owns or operates 11 tracks across the country, Smith oversees a lot of projects and has had a lot of input in recent ideas that have come to life.
The decision to move Charlotte’s second date to the Roval layout was Smith’s, as was the reconfiguration of EchoPark Speedway (formerly Atlanta Motor Speedway) to race more like a drafting-style track. While the former has lost some of its luster in recent years, the latter has been a huge success and delivered arguably the best race of the season when Chase Elliott took the checkered flag on June 28.
His latest idea, though, may be his boldest yet, as he explained to Kevin Harvick on the “Happy Hour” podcast that he wants to put a roof on Bristol Motor Speedway.
“Yeah, I think I learned from my dad that taking risks is how you can achieve things. So, I have a high risk tolerance level that I’m willing to do things that could make a difference,” Smith said. “I’m not afraid to fail. But the dream, I think the thing that would be awesome to do, and we could do it, is to put a roof on Bristol one day. I would love that. Then, the things you could do there, it would be – you know, we’ve got a baseball game coming up next month in Bristol. We’ve done a football game. We could do WrestleMania. You could have, who knows what, the biggest UFC fight in the world.
“Anything you do at Bristol is going to be the biggest at any stadium because it’s the biggest stadium, you know? In terms of a place you can have a field and be able to see it. If you put a football field at Charlotte, it would be a postage stamp. But at Bristol, you know, everybody can see it, and this baseball game will kind of have that same feel. But yeah, a roof on Bristol would be a big dream. It’s doable. If we can hang the biggest TV in the world over the top of Bristol, we can put a roof on it.”