SPARTA, Ky. — Jerry Carroll’s last race as owner of the Kentucky Speedway marked the first sellout in the IndyCar Series’ nine visits to the track.
The irony wasn’t lost on the man who tried for years to prove the 1.5-mile oval halfway between Cincinnati and Louisville was the equal of almost any track in the country.
“You have to give a lot of credit to the fans, because they wanted to show there’s an interest in this sport,” Carroll said before the Meijer Indy 300. “We’re a performing team here. We’ve always been trying to sell a good product.”
The salesmanship, however, couldn’t convince NASCAR to bring a Sprint Cup race to the track. The ownership group filed an antitrust lawsuit against NASCAR and International Speedway Corp. three years ago. The case was dismissed in January, though Carroll has filed an appeal.
Frustrated, Carroll and company agreed to sell the track to Speedway Motorsports Inc., owned by Bruton Smith, in May.
“Bruton will have an opportunity to come in here and justify some of the situations that are going on,” Carroll said. “Are deal was if you don’t like some of the (details) send the contract back.”
Smith, who owns several other tracks, including Texas Speedway and Infineon Raceway in California, spent some time before the race talking with IRL president Tony George and said he’s eager to get started revamping the track.
“I think that what can happen is we’ll be doing a lot of things here and I think anything that we do is going to make the IndyCar Series better as well as NASCAR,” Smith said. “We’re going to work both sides of the street.”
Smith said he has no concerns about the IndyCar’s future at the track, and has no problem with the series’ early August date.
Things aren’t as rosy on the NASCAR front. Though Smith still holds faint hope that the track will land a Sprint Cup date next year, he thinks the lawsuit between the current ownership group and NASCAR is holding things up.
“If you could wave a magic wand and the lawsuit was dropped, we would go to work on (getting a race) and try to change their mind,” Smith said.
Carroll said he has no plans to drop the lawsuit, though he admits winning is a long shot. Wearing a Speedway shirt with the phrase “get lucky in Kentucky” stitched underneath the logo — a gift from Smith — he’s eager to move on.
“I’m not bitter, I’m just dissatisfied and unhappy and I feel bad that the team that we had, the race track that we had, they have both completely been put into a second-class kind of atmosphere,” Carroll said. “With the opportunities we’ve been given, we did as good a job as we can.”
OVAL WOES: The Champ Car drivers continued to struggle on the ovals.
None of the eight former Champ Car drivers managed to finish in the top 10, a problem all season as their respective teams have struggled to play catch-up since Champ Car and the Indy Racing League merged earlier this year.
Oriol Servia’s 12th-place finish marked the best of the bunch and four former Champ drivers failed to finish the race.
Will Power made it only five laps before calling it a night. Graham Rahal started 20th and rose all the way to 12th before gear box problems sent him home early.
“It’s unfortunate,” Rahal said. “We started 20th, moved up to 12th and were running really well. I could have easily driven up another few spots.”
LADIES NIGHT: Danica Patrick won the battle among the series’ three female drivers, working her way from 25th all the way up to 11th.
The finish capped an up-and-down night for Patrick. She was clipped by Sarah Fisher when Fisher made a pass near the start/finish line but recovered thanks to some shrewd pit strategy.
Fisher, making her first start since the Indy 500, was running 11th finish before a right rear bearing failure at the end of the race pushed her back to 15th. Still, Fisher is optimistic about her team’s future.
“Everybody did a great job,” Fisher said. “We just have to figure out what happened to the right rear bearing. We’ll give them something to run with in Chicago.”
Milka Duno finished 21st after slamming into the wall on lap 130 when her suspension broke.
THE LOVE GLOVE: Tony Kanaan found a new role before Saturday’s race: Cupid.
The Andretti Green Racing driver played a vital role in helping fan Ryan Donohue’s propose to girlfriend Kerri Wilson.
Earlier this season, Wilson approached Kanaan and asked for a pair of driving gloves. Kanaan told her to try and catch him later in the year.
Later turned into Saturday. This time, when Wilson asked Kanaan for a pair of gloves, Kanaan obliged and encouraged her to try them on.
When Wilson slipped her hands inside, she found an engagement ring in one of the gloves as Donohue dropped to one knee. Of course she said yes as Kanaan watched.
“You almost made me cry,” Kanaan told them.
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