Officials said today’s Sylvania 300 at New Hampshire Motor Speedway is a sellout, and, with an additional 3,000 tickets being sold for the infield, a crowd of about 104,000 is expected. NHMS came up a thousand or so tickets short of a sellout for its June race. “Hopefully, we’ll have the biggest crowd ever in the history of the Speedway,” said Smith, who would love to see lights at the track as a major addition for next season. Yes, it’s been a pretty good year at the racetrack. “Across the board, with the economy the way it is, we’re probably averaging a 7 to 10 percent decline in attendance,” said Jim Hunter, NASCAR vice president of corporate communications. “But this track is holding its own pretty well. These fans are avid. There are no more avid fans than there are at this racetrack.” That’s a major reason, Hunter said, that he doesn’t see NHMS losing one of its two annual Sprint Cup races, something that some fans feared when Bruston Smith’s company [SMI] — which owns seven other speedways — bought the track. “When you can sell 90-100,000 tickets, to take a chance on moving it somewhere where you may sell 60-70,000 — to me, that doesn’t make any sense,” Hunter said.(New Hampshire Union Leader)(9-20-2009)
