Bruton Smith
| Bruton Smith | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Ollen Bruton Smith March 2, 1927 Oakboro, North Carolina |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | Racing promoter and race track owner |
| Years active | 1949–present |
| Organization | Speedway Motorsports, Inc. |
| Net worth | $600 million (2008) |
| Parent(s) | James Smith, Mollie Smith |
Ollen Bruton Smith (born March 2, 1927) is a promoter and owner/CEO of NASCAR track owner Speedway Motorsports, Inc. Inducted into NASCAR Hall of Fame January 23, 2016. He was ranked #207 on the Forbes 400 list with an estimated worth of $1.5 billion in 2005, and fell to #278 (worth an estimated $1.4 billion) in 2006. He is divorced with four children. He was inducted in the International Motorsports Hall of Fame in 2007. In 2012, Smith was classified by CNN Money as the oldest CEO of the Fortune 500.
Smith was born in Oakboro, North Carolina and watched his first race as an eight-year-old. He bought his first race car at 17. He began promoting stock car events as an 18-year-old at Midland, North Carolina. He claims that he beat NASCAR legends Buck Baker and Joe Weatherly. He quit racing because his mother wanted him to quit.
In 1949, Smith took over the (NSCRA), one of several fledgling stock-car sanctioning bodies and a direct competitor to the recently founded NASCAR, and announced that the series, which sanctioned races across Tennessee, Georgia and North Carolina, would establish a "Strictly Stock" division that year; some believe this caused Bill France, Sr., NASCAR's founder, to accelerate his plans for his own Strictly Stock division, which would later become the Winston, then Sprint Cup Series; it also touched off a rivalry between Smith and the France family. France and Smith discussed merging their sanctions in 1950, and came to a tentative agreement on the issue, however Smith was drafted into the United States Army to fight in the Korean War in January 1951, becoming a paratrooper; two years later, when Smith returned to civilian life, he found that mismanagement in his absence had caused NSCRA to dissolve.
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