It's official, the new owner of New Hampshire International Speedway is Bruton Smith, CEO and Chairman of Speedway Motorsports Inc., which now owns seven tracks: Atlanta Motor Speedway, Texas Motor Speedway, Infineon Raceway, Lowe’s Motor Speedway in Concord, N.C., Las Vegas Motor Speedway, Bristol and now NHIS.

Among others that were interested in purchasing NHIS were Jack Roush and Roger Penske.

Smith was in New Hampshire last week to seal the deal with Bob Bahre. The acquisition will close in the first quarter of 2008. In the teleconference held at 12:30 EDT at Texas Motor Speedway, he was asked if he was going to take a race away from NHIS to secure a second race at Atlanta Motor Speedway. As of right now, he has no plans to move dates of the races, though he was vague about answering this question.

He also said New Englanders shouldn't be nervous. His main goal is to make the track better and more fan friendly.

I will download the complete transcript later today when it's available - probably around 5:30.

More to come later.

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