A surprise finish for racing's dynamic duo
Humpy Wheeler and Bruton Smith transformed auto racing before a well-publicized falling out. But that’s not the end of their story.
This article appeared in the May 28, 2021, edition of The Charlotte Ledger, an e-newsletter with original local news and insights. Need to get on our list or upgrade your subscription? (Details here)
Humpy Wheeler and Bruton Smith at Charlotte Motor Speedway in the late 1990s. (Charlotte Motor Speedway/HHP photo)
By Colleen Brannan
For 33 years, Humpy Wheeler and Bruton Smith were one of the best teams in auto racing.
They worked side by side with a shared vision of making the sport more mainstream and converting Charlotte Motor Speedway into one of the best sports facilities in the world. They spoke every day for decades, traveled together, fed off each other and built an empire.
But that relationship came to a screeching halt in April 2008. Egos got the best of them. Wheeler took early retirement, and over the years, their ongoing squabble played out in the media for all to see.
Since they parted ways, it has been radio silence between the two … until last year, when Wheeler decided to put the past in the rear view. He drove to Smith’s house, rang the doorbell and waited.
Shared dirt track roots
The two men, both from small towns in North Carolina, shared dirt track roots and were promoters at heart. Wheeler grew up in Belmont, where his dad, Humpy Sr., was the athletic director at Belmont Abbey. He ran the Robinwood Racetrack in Gastonia back in the day.
Smith was the son of a cotton farmer and grew up in Oakboro, about an hour east of Charlotte. He ran the original Concord Speedway, became a car salesman and helped create the Charlotte Motor Speedway, which opened in 1960.
The starting line
Their story began in 1975 when Smith, CEO of Speedway Motorsports, offered Wheeler the general manager position at Charlotte Motor Speedway. Humpy started that Labor Day weekend and says his first order of business was changing the color scheme. “We needed to tone it down a bit from early beer-can red and white to more of a cream,” he explained.
A year later he was named president of Charlotte Motor Speedway. Over the next three decades, they were known as hard-charging innovators who helped take a sport from its Southern bootlegging roots into prime time national exposure. They claimed many NASCAR firsts — from being the first major track to sell naming rights and holding the first race under the lights at a superspeedway to hiring friendlier ticket takers and building nice, clean restrooms with women in mind.
Together, these two ambitious men revived a racetrack on life support, took the company public on the New York Stock Exchange, raised advertising revenue from zero to $58M and helped NASCAR reshape their TV contracts.
In Wheeler’s autobiography, “Growing Up NASCAR,” he wrote: “We were two intense, creative, aggressive, men in a business loaded with violence, intrigue, mystery and two-fisted testosterone — where the Wild Wild West met the Scotch-Irish toughness of the Southeast.”
Tom Cotter, public relations director at Charlotte Motor Speedway from 1985-1989, summed up the duo like this: “Bruton Smith and Humpy Wheeler operated like a successful marriage; they didn’t always see eye-to-eye, but each brought a talent to the relationship that the other lacked. Management at other tracks looked on in awe, wishing they could replicate Charlotte’s odd couple.”
A well-publicized split
In 2008, though, the pair parted ways. As with most any split, there were probably multiple causes that differed depending on who you talk to.
In his autobiography, Wheeler wrote that the reasons for his departure ranged from being left out of major decisions to money. Others said it had to do with who received credit for ideas.
Whatever the cause, Wheeler’s last race running Charlotte Motor Speedway was the Coca-Cola 600 on May 25, 2008, almost exactly 13 years ago.
The spat played out publicly. They would talk to reporters, but not to each other. An ESPN article from 2012, for instance, described them as being “at war again” — over the issue of whose idea it was to install lights at the Speedway.
Burying the hatchet
But time, it appears, can indeed heal old wounds.
In an interview, Wheeler says that about a year ago, it hit him that enough was enough. He missed his old friend. “We were like brothers, and I missed the debates,” he explained.
So he drove to Smith’s house and rang the bell.
“I waited for them to put the dog up and then went in,” he recalls.
A 12-year silence was broken with a “How ya doin’?” from both.
According to Wheeler, Smith, now 94, said he was really glad to see him. The old friends moved on from there, never discussing the more than a decade of their friendship lost.
Smith no longer does interviews, but a source with Speedway Motorsports confirmed that the two have gotten together a few times to catch up and share some laughs.
“When people get to be our ages, you spend time thinking about broken relationships, and if they can be glued back together, they should be,” said Wheeler, now 82. “He was the Ritz-Carlton and I was the Holiday Inn, but it worked, for a really long time. And for me, it was a friendship worth saving.”
Only one of these men will be at the Coca-Cola 600 this Sunday. But the surprise finish to their story is like all the best races.
Colleen Brannan owns BRANSTORM PR and can usually be found writing a monthly humor column for The Charlotte Ledger. Humpy held a press conference in April 2008 to announce his retirement, on his terms. Brannan handled that announcement for him and was by his side for 14 hours at his last race. She considers it a career highlight, and they remain close today. Reach her at colleen@branstorm.com
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