Bahre's timing makes perfect sense

If nothing else, Bob Bahre has always been a smart businessman.

He knew people in New England would eat up big-time NASCAR stock car racing. He knew that by keeping local tours like Busch East and Modifieds on his schedule it would foster good public relations around these parts. He knows that treating a big business like a small-town general store works.

Bahre's also smart enough to know to get out while the getting's good.

Everywhere you look, NASCAR's "stock" is plummeting. The racing is routinely criticized for being more boring than ever. The television ratings drop on what seems to be an event-by-event basis. Tracks may report sellouts, but the camera shots tell us otherwise virtually everywhere the Nextel Cup Series goes -- Talladega (yep), Atlanta (uh-huh), California (naturally)...

Add in that you've got Bruton Smith's Speedway Motorsports Inc. throwing millions upon millions of dollars you're way for your little New Hampshire International Speedway -- and what's a good businessman to do?

New England fans know that keeping their 2 Cup races is now a pipe dream, that they will be lucky to have 1 race a year if and when Smith gets control of the track. In fact, it's a very real possibility that in the matter of a few short years, Cup racing will be gone entirely from the antiquated little track in the nation's northeast. It's no big secret that among Smith's first order of business will be to move 1 of the dates to his Las Vegas facility, perhaps for the start of the Chase in 2009.

NASCAR is big business now, of course. Hundreds of millions of dollars is a small price for someone like Smith to pay for NHIS's 2 coveted Cup dates -- money Smith could easily make back 10-fold in a couple of seasons by simply moving his race to bigger, more profitable tracks.

Bahre's son, Gary, has never had any interest in running the track for his father, now 80. That being said, the family ought to get out while the getting's good.

In such a fickle business, all it would take is a couple of years worth of NASCAR in a downward spiral for the Bahres to be left with next to nothing. It may hurt for the fans to hear it, but there will never be a more appropriate time to sell the place.

All you can hope for now is that Smith doesn't want to change what's at work at NHIS already -- as ridiculous as we all know that notion to be.