It's Michigan Sunday, and the traffic is.....

  Digging in: Michigan's Roger Curtis (R), with Ryan Newman. (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)  
    

   By Mike Mulhern
   mikemulhern.net

   BROOKLYN, Mich.
   No word yet on NASCAR's 2011 tour schedule. But that new second Cup weekend proposed for Kansas City, with the opening of that new casino just outside the first turn, has some stock car racing promoters wondering – perhaps sweating out -- just where that Cup date will come from.
   With the NASCAR Cup tour already working 38 weeks a season, no one expects CEO Brian France to add a 39th week for Kansas. Rather that that new race will have to come at the expense of one of the France family's current International Speedway Corp. (ISC) tracks.
   But Bruton Smith, who runs rival Speedway Motorsports (SMI), may be backing away from pushing for a Cup weekend in 2011 at his Kentucky Speedway, which hosted Saturday night's Nationwide 300 (to a less than 72,000-capacity crowd). Smith, to move a Cup date to Kentucky, would also likely have to cut a Cup weekend from one of his current tracks.
    ISC runs 19 Sprint Cup events at its 12 tracks: Daytona, California, Martinsville, Phoenix, Talladega, Richmond, Darlington, Michigan, Chicagoland, Watkins Glen, Kansas and Homestead-Miami.
    SMI runs 12 Cup races at its seven tracks.
    The ISC track losing a week for that second Kansas race?
   Michigan president Roger Curtis insists that it won't be his, that this track will continue to host two Cup events.
   And Curtis can point to some major improvements at this 1969-built facility.
   Curtis, who took the reins here in 2006, has just cut the ribbon on a huge new array of pit road suites and infield-to-grandstand pedestrian tunnel, part of some $55 million in capital improvement projects, including a new scoreboard, new sound system, better infield drainage, and 23,000 more grandstand seats. (Here's Curtis talking about his 'infield project:  http://bit.ly/c17XTV  ) And Curtis says NASCAR officials want him next to start rebuilding the garage area itself, which really hasn't been greatly improved in years.
   Curtis, who has been high-profile here this weekend, checking out the action and reaction, says this track generates about $400 million annually into the area economy (and that's without an Indy-car weekend, which was once a staple here).
   So what about traffic control?
   This track once held the dubious record of worst traffic control in NASCAR.
   -- Part of that is because the track, which seats 137,243, sits on US 12, a winding two-lane country road from Detroit west. The closest Interstate is I-94 10 miles north. And the US 12 shoulder asphalt isn't wide enough to allow four lanes of traffic on race weekends; some other NASCAR tracks have done the politicking to get their access highway shoulders widened that much, greatly improving traffic flow. 
   -- And part of that was – was – because state highway officials for years limited special traffic control lanes to only a one-mile stretch around the track. Curtis credits the new M.DOT boss Kurt Steudle for allowing expansion of that traffic control sector two years ago, and he says that's allowed the track to empty traffic in about 90 minutes.
   How well traffic works after Sunday's Michigan 400 remains to be seen.
   But Curtis says his customers aren't shy about letting him know what they're thinking.

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Aric Almirola (51) winning Saturday's Truck Series 200 (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)