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"Looking back on it, I got to thinking, I was thankful he did that," he says. "I was looking around, and the captain did not have a shotgun on board. Whatever size this shark was, we were not prepared to deal with it."

How true what Smith says: "The largest is always the one that you didn't land."

So, just a dramatic fishing story?

Or a metaphor?

One that got away?

Or with Bruton Smith and NASCAR, you're not sure who's got whom on the hook?

Bruton Smith was--OK, more fish talk--"hooked (racing) when I was quite young. I was 7 or 8 years, old, fire first race I saw," he says.

He loved the speed. He loved the competition. "I grew up with my driver's license attached to speed," Smith says. It's human nature, he figures. "When you're a kid, if you have a tricycle, you want to outrun the other kids' tricycles," he says. "And then your bicycle. And it goes on and on and on. I guess that's what I'm guilty of."

Smith bought his first racecar when he was 17. "I was convinced I was going to be a professional driver," he says. But he hit a roadblock. His mother. She didn't want him racing.

"She didn't just put her foot down. She started praying on it," Smith says, laughing. "I said, 'Well, Mom, you're fighting dirty when you start that.' I quit racing then."

It's barely more than a shrug when Smith tells you he bought that car at age 17 and says, "and I guess the rest is history." Like Mozart got a piano, and "the rest is history."

Smith, now 75, went from racing cars to selling them and to promoting races in the Charlotte area. In 1959, he and driver Curtis Turner built Charlotte Motor Speedway, which opened in June 1960. Two years later, the track had fallen into Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and Smith departed. But as his businesses grew--Sonic Automotive now includes 186 auto dealerships and 45 collision repair centers and ranks 253rd in the Fortune 500--the itch for racing never left. He began to purchase bits of ownership in the Charlotte track and by 1975 had become the majority owner again.

It has evolved into a palatial speedway with luxury suites, 60 condos, a seven-story office tower and Speedway Club and some of the best facilities in the sport for drivers. And oh, did we mention 167,000 seats? Few of which ever go unfilled on Winston Cup weekends.

"Somebody asked me one time, 'Boy, I but you're proud of that, aren't you?' But I didn't have much money in it when I built it. Curtis was really no help," he says. "He was there for the groundbreaking, and I had the speedway about 65 percent completed when I saw him again. The front stretch was laid out, and he went out and saw it and he said, 'You screwed that up. You can't go more than 75, 80 miles an hour through there.' I said, 'Too late now. Just relax and enjoy it.'

"So, the only thing I say about it, it's there and nobody can move it."

Let others say it for him.

"He's definitely stepped it up a notch for a lot of people," Jeff Gordon says. "You look at the new facilities today, and he has set examples for how those tracks should be run.

"When you go to his tracks, they're places that are eye-opening. I remember the first time I saw Charlotte, it looked light-years ahead of may track I had seen. It looked to me like they were designing it in a way to look to the future, and I think that's awesome for anybody who wants to be a part of this sport and take it to the next level. I definitely think he has."

Indeed, Charlotte begat Atlanta, with its gorgeous Tara Place Condominiums. And from there Texas and Bristol, Las Vegas and the revamped Infineon Raceway, nee Sears Point. All told, six tracks, nine Winston Cup races, close to a million seats. Coupled with his other business interests, Smith is one of racing's richest and most powerful forces.

"Bruton has had a great impact on the sport," car owner Jack Roush says. "He's tied together a number of racetracks and made them show places.

"And he has really been a lot of the energy. He's a cornerstone--not maybe the centerpiece, but certainly a cornerstone--of the business unit that supports NASCAR today."

To return to thick cables for an analogy: Sometimes they are used for support, to hold up bridges or in other intricate construction uses; sometimes they are used to battle a shark.

Without question, Smith's Speedway Motorsports Inc. supports NASCAR's success. Some of the circuit's most successful races are at his tracks. The question these days is whether NASCAR supports Smith?

The relationship between Smith and the France faintly that controls NASCAR and owns rival International Speedway Corp. has long been tenuous. They worked together, even had social relationships, but through much of the time it was best defined by a line from The Godfather Part II, from Michael Corleone: "My father taught me many things ... keep your friends close but your enemies closer."

The rift between the two parties is enormous now. Smith and NASCAR chairman Bill France Jr. are at odds. "Adversarial" is the way Smith has long described their relationship.

Earlier in the year, France said, "Bruton, when he opens his mouth, sometimes sounds constipated." In response, Smith says: "I forgave him for that. Sometimes people speak, and they maybe didn't have their brain engaged. I don't know, but I forgave him for it."

Like a bad marriage, sometimes it's the innocent parties who suffer the most. In this feud, that would be the racing public and even the drivers and teams.

"It'd be amazing if the SMI and ISC tracks were together," driver Bobby Labonte says. "It'd be amazing how much more this could be instead of being a battling situation. You hate to see it because you wonder what's going to happen. You wonder about the lawsuit."

Ah, the lawsuit." The lawsuit," Smith says, chuckling as he adds the emphasis.

In a nutshell:

Francis Ferko, who is listed as an SMI stockholder but a man Smith says he has never met, is suing NASCAR, alleging it has not fulfilled a promise to put a second race at Texas Motor Speedway. Beyond that, the suit is significant because some of NASCAR's private contracts and business practices could be revealed.

NASCAR officials, through a spokesperson, declined comment about Smith for this story, pointing to the pending suit. Smith's wry comment: "I think some lawyers are going to make a lot of money. I read where Johnnie Cochran (one of Ferko's lawyers) said that there were 50 lawyers working on that case."

Whatever happens in the trial, Smith will continue to be a lightning rod for controversy. Though he will debate the use of that phrase.

"Some of the electricity directed to my lightning rod is certainly undeserved, ill-deserved, where people are trying to escape some of their own problems or their own misdeeds, and they want to look for a scapegoat," Smith says.

"From time to time, statements have been made, stupid statements, by people who do not know of what they speak. Eventually all the truth will come out. And I think that will happen in this trial."

RELATED ARTICLE: Who owns what.

Speedway Motorsports Inc., chaired by Bruton Smith, is one of the power brokers on the Winston Cup circuit. But there's one larger player in town: International Speedway Corp., which is guided by the France family. SMI (six) and ISC (11) own 17 of the 23 Cup tracks. ISC also owns percent of Raceway Associates, which owns Chicagoland.

ISC SMI

California Atlanta
Darlington Bristol
Daytona Charlotte
Homestead-Miami Las Vegas
Michigan Infineon
Kansas Texas
North Carolina
Phoenix
Richmond
Talladega
Watkins Glen
Others

Track Owner

Chicago Raceway
 Associates
Dover Dover Downs
 Ent. Inc.
Indianapolis Hulman-George
 family
Martinsville W. Clay
 Campbell
New Hampshire Bob Bahre
Pocono Pocono
 Raceway Inc.

--Paul Grant

RELATED ARTICLE: Advice and contempt.

Above all, Bruton Smith is a businessman. "I enjoy business," he says. "I enjoy building businesses. I like to make positive changes in businesses."

He'd like to see some positive changes in NASCAR, and not just in landing that precious second race for his Texas Motor Speedway without paying for it by losing a race at one of his other tracks.

"The No. 1 major thing: Stop the testing," Smith says. "They need to cut the costs. They're doing a horrible job of cutting their own costs. I don't know if they even have a budget meeting."

Smith also rails about NASCAR extracting such a large slice of the television money for the parent company, rather than each speedway getting a larger share and paying larger purses, which he says would help mitigate the costs for tracks and teams.

He cites the organization of other major leagues and how they pass through revenue to team owners, suggesting a similar setup with more money going to track owners for purses would be best for NASCAR.

"They continue to take too much out of the sport," Smith says. "It's ridiculous what they're doing. They ought to be ashamed of themselves. Absolutely ashamed.".