NASCAR track owner Bruton Smith has died. He was 95.
Smith founded Speedway Motorsports, a company that owns and operates numerous tracks on the NASCAR schedule. Smith built Charlotte Motor Speedway in 1959 and Speedway Motorsports also owns and operates Bristol Motor Speedway, Sonoma Raceway, Las Vegas Motor Speedway, Texas Motor Speedway, Atlanta Motor Speedway and New Hampshire Motor Speedway. The company also purchased Dover Motor Speedway in 2021.
He got into the track ownership business after running a stock car series designed to compete with NASCAR. The series Smith was running, however, fizzled out in the 1950s after he served during the Korean War.