That's Racing: A Cup race for Nashville? Dream on

In response to a recent story about the plight of Nashville Superspeedway, a reader said I predicted the Gladeville track would lure a big-time NASCAR Cup race to Music City. Sorry, wrong messenger. From the outset, I reported just the opposite, and unfortunately nothing’s changed.

In 2000, when Dover Motorsports announced plans to build the track, the first call I made was to NASCAR headquarters. I asked if there were any plans to give the track a Cup race. NASCAR said ‘no.’

That’s what I reported: the Superspeedway could secure some lower-level NASCAR events, but it couldn’t lure back one of the Fairgrounds’ Cup races that was frittered away in 1984.

Time and again a rumor would arise and create a ripple of hope. Each time I’d call NASCAR and ask if anything had changed. Each time I’d be told it hadn’t.

After the umpteenth call, NASCAR probably was tempted to borrow a line from one of our country ballads: what part of ‘no’ doesn’t Nashville understand?

I continue to be baffled by Dover Motorsports’ decision to build such an expensive, elaborate facility with no Cup assurance. Dover has been doing business with NASCAR for four decades and surely before it pumped $100 million into a spiffy new track it inquired about its Cup prospects.

I assume NASCAR gave Dover the same answer it gave me: No way, no how, no Nashville. Yet Dover went ahead and built a first-class track that appears destined to host second-tier races.

It is indeed a first-rate facility. I’d rate the Superspeedway on par or better than half the tracks that currently host Cup races. But the drawback today is the same as when the track opened nine years ago: location.

We’re surrounded by Cup tracks: Indy to the north, Bristol to the east, Talladega and Atlanta to the south. NASCAR’s not going to put another Cup race in this area, especially after Kentucky Speedway gets one in the next year or two.

When the old Fairgrounds track got bogged down in management problems — an unimaginable mess that got the track snarled in a California bankruptcy battle — NASCAR hit the road.

The sport was quivering on the cusp of a dynamic new era, and Nashville was mired in the past. And so while our leaders quibbled over such pressing matters as who was responsible for patching a leak in the Fairgrounds office roof, NASCAR skipped down with races worth over $100 million annually.

Whose fault was it? Everybody’s. And nobody’s.

What difference does it make? The Cup races are gone, and gone forever.

Unless the Indy Racing League comes to its senses and returns to Nashville, the Superspeedway is destined to remain what it’s been from the start: a very expensive field of dreams.