Plenty of room for racing

LOUDON, N.H. - There's a story going around up this way that New Hampshire International Speedway is for sale. I've been coming here 11 years now, and that sentence could have been written virtually every time I've been here.

Bob Bahre not only owns this track, it's like he's part of it. You see him around the garage and several other places all the time, far more than you ever see any other track owner unless you happen to be hob-nobbing in some corporate suite.

(That might not be totally fair. Dr. Joe Mattioli at Pocono is around a lot, too. But he and Bahre are certainly 1 and 1A in that department.)

Every time I'm here, I go into the little diner/snack bar next door to the media center for lunch on Friday. The food's good and the prices (yes, I pay) are very reasonable.

Every time, there's a big table in a corner with Bahre sitting there talking to NASCAR's top officials, usually including Mike Helton, Robin Pemberton and John Darby or at least some combination of the above.

There's a social element to the gathering, and of course there's lunch, too. But Bahre is also asking the NASCAR brass if there are any problems that need to be attended to as well. If something comes up, he'll take care of it. He won't disptach a minion to do it, either.

Bahre is 81 years old. He goes like he's half that age, but one of these days he's not going to want to put up with doing all he has to do to run a big-time race track. He's got a son, Gary, but Gary has apparently made it abundantly clear that he doesn't have this place in his blood the way his father has.

So with Nextel Cup dates worth their weight in dollar bills, the fact that ownership of this track might one day change hands stirs great interest.

Bahre has talked to International Speedway Corp. and to Speedway Motorsports Inc. (and its owner Bruton Smith), and the latest story is he has talked to John Henry, the man whose Fenway Sports Group bought into Roush Racing earlier this year.

That would be a perfect marriage, between the Boston Red Sox and this track.

You can't swing a rope around your head here without hitting someone in a Red Sox hat, and while the rest of the country this week has been paying a lot of attention to the New England Patriots' "spygate" affair the folks up here are obsessing over every pitch of a weekend series at Fenway Park with the New York Yankees.

There's absolutely no question that the Sox own this region. The Patriots might be a dynasty, but I once was at a Super Bowl where the Pats played the Carolina Panthers and all the Boston media could talk about was the latest developments on the baseball team's pitching staff.

That having been said, these folks also love racing. It rained all morning Saturday and it took until the start of the Truck Series race at 3 p.m. to get anything on the track.

The weather cleared and the Trucks raced, then the Whelen Modified cars took the track. As the sun went down behind the grandstands, the wind picked up and it was beginning to get a little chilly (by my standards, at least). But there were still plenty of people in the grandstands watching that race.

When this track is sold one day, the new owner might have plans to take one of the Cup dates away. That'd be wrong. The fans here fill this place up. They've done nothing to warrant losing a race. They support this track and support racing on all levels.

If selling it to John Henry and the Fenway group, maybe that means the New England roots will hold and those fans won't face that fate. Baseball might be king in New England, but there's plenty of room for racing here, too.