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Racing Revs Cabarrus' Engine

Outside it's all shrieking noise and streaks of brilliant lime, blue, cherry red. But inside their aerodynamic helmets behind blackened face shields, ears plugged and heads enshrouded in flameproof balaclavas, drivers doing 140 mph never hear the cheers.

This was the scene on an October Sunday eleven months ago and one that will be repeated again in a few weeks. The site is Lowe's Motor Speedway in Concord. But there's no Dale Earnhardt in this field.

The cars are as small as riding lawnmowers, with Briggs & Stratton engines on steroids. The racers, members of the 11,000-member World Karting Association, headquartered year around within earshot of the speedway, are a small part of a large success story unique in North Carolina.

The Cabarrus County racing industry, from the massive, $300 million speedway to Tony's Competition Engines of Concord (employment, Tony Corrente plus one) is an economic melodrama with scenes ranging from bankruptcy to Wall Street stardom.

View the final scene first. “If motorsports were a single employer,” says researcher David Hartgen, lead author of a study on the local industry, “it would be the sixth largest in Cabarrus County and the third largest business.” Salaries in motorsports firms, which employ 1,000 workers, explain the difference. At $40,111 a year, they are nearly double the county average.

Today, when flamboyant Felix Sabates, who pumps $20 million a year into his three race teams, advertises for a metal fabricator, the ad notes “aerospace experience preferred.” Among 100 motorsports concerns in Cabarrus, the second largest contingent, next to 40 direct participants such as car builders, is a corps of two dozen racing-related public relations firms.

Rowan-Cabarrus Community College offers a motorsports management degree, and a few miles south of the speedway, graduates of UNC Charlotte's mechanical engineering curriculum in motorsports work for such teams as Joe Gibbs Racing, owned by the former Washington Redskins coach who gave up football for fast cars.

“Not only does the local motorsports industry pay higher wages, but it also purchases more in additional goods and services than the average business,” adds Hartgen, who calculates direct economic benefit to Cabarrus at $124 million a year. That's four times the impact of the NFL Carolina Panthers in neighboring Mecklenburg, as estimated by the Charlotte Chamber.

Now, the flashback. In his speedway office, H.A. “Humpy” Wheeler, president and chief executive of Speedway Motorsports Inc., a New York Stock Exchange company that owns the track and others nationwide, is surrounded by mementos and bookshelves. One of the molders of modern stock car racing, Wheeler traces its past to area board tracks and open-wheel racers of the 1920s, then the dusty dirt tracks of the 1940s and 1950s. In the 1960, the script began to change.

O. Bruton Smith, now Speedway Motorsports chairman, raised $1.5 million to launch the 1.5-mile track, including sale of 300,000 share of stock at $1 each. The first race, in June 1960, was a success, but the new pavement disintegrated. Smith's financing did too, and a year later the track was bankrupt.

Smith fought back and in 1975, Wheeler, a marketer and former amateur boxer, joined him. The two brought innovations not only to racing, but sports in general. For example, they built the track's first corporate suites in 1977. A decade later, such suite sales would become a mainstay of stadium financing in all sports. The track now has 120.

“Corporations discovered that suites make a pretty good entertainment value,” says Wheeler. “You can bring in 30 or 40 of your customers at one time for dinner and a day of it at a fraction of the cost of doing it one at a time.” Growing television exposure began to attract more of corporate America.

Today, racing dominates southwest Cabarrus. Backing Up Classics Museum attracts thousands with antique and classic race cars, and in the speedway complex, Sam Bass Illustration & Design Gallery is the gallery of racing artist Sam Bass. At the track, and on a smaller scale at the half-mile Concord Motorsport Park south of Concord, budding racers enroll in driving schools to learn if they have the makings of superstars.

Set on winding lanes in bright new industrial parks, race teams rub shoulders with companies like Action Performance Companies Inc., another publicly traded company. It makes die-cast car models, souvenirs and racing apparel.

A few miles away, down once sleepy Morehead Road and up a hill in Harrisburg, the 25-acre Hendrick Motorsports spread is one of the showplaces. With sponsors such as DuPont de Nemours & Co., and Kellogg Co., the company's complex houses five racing teams, includes a museum and retail store, and employs 250 workers. It maintains a fleet of five airplanes.

“The simple fact is,” adds Dan Lohwasser, Hendrick Motorsports spokesman, “this sport wouldn't be running if not for the support we get from major corporations.”

Another example is North Wilkesboro's Lowe's Companies Inc., which last year paid $37 million for naming rights to the speedway. “Close to 40 percent of our ticket sales are now corporate,” adds Wheeler, “and it would probably be higher if we didn't have so many long-term ticket holders who've handed down seats from generation to generation.”

But racing is strikingly different from other sports ventures in Charlotte, Raleigh and elsewhere. Instead of requiring tax money for arenas and stadiums, Cabarrus County officials note that the speedway has grown with zero public financing and instead, contributed millions to area infrastructure, including six-laning nearby U.S. 29, and paying half the cost of the $10 million Speedway Boulevard, a two-mile parkway connecting U.S. 29 to Interstate 85.

Today, with activities scheduled 300 days a year, the track is the hub of year-round events. But the economic clout of the 10 days each May that surround the Coca-Cola 600 dwarfs all else.

Close to 500,000 fans attend events, with more than 45 percent from out of state. When the last engine is silent, they have left behind $41.6 million, estimates the Charlotte Convention & Visitors Bureau. Smith says those fans deserve credit for the track and racing's success in Cabarrus. “The speedway was built not with public funds,” he says, “but by the public.”

—Edward Martin

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