Bruton Smith's Take: On Humpy Wheeler

  
Showman extraordinaire: Humpy Wheeler -- wanted a $5 million golden parachute? (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)
  
  

   By Mike Mulhern
   mikemulhern.net

   CONCORD, N.C.
   What's a 600 without Humpy Wheeler?
   The strange case of NASCAR's best known promoter keeps getting a little stranger, even here a year after mega-track-owner Bruton Smith and his former lead dog split so suddenly.
   On the eve of the sport's longest race, the Coke 600, it was Smith, not Wheeler, holding court at Lowe's Motor Speedway Saturday.
   And Smith was certainly on his game, jabbing, poking, prodding and ducking pitches from the media ensemble here for Sunday's 600 (5:45 p.m. EDT).
   Wheeler? He was at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, as guest of Tony George.
   Was Wheeler – for so many years Mr. Speedway, with a legendary list of 600 promotions – disinvited to the track he ran for Smith for some 30 years?
   Smith didn't duck this one:
   "Some of you don't realize that he retired," Smith said of his long-time sidekick.
   "I was better to Humpy than I've been to anyone else in my life. Even my brothers. Anybody. And I don't think I'll have the opportunity to be as nice to anybody again as I was to him.
   "In November (2007) before he decided to retire, I gave him a check for $560,000.
    "I'd called Humpy (earlier) and said 'I've bought a piece of property and I'm giving you 25 percent.'
   "Well, later I sold it….and one day I called Humpy and asked him to come by for lunch, and I gave him a check for $560,000.
    "He said 'Okay.' But he didn't say thank you.
   "I'm tell you all this so you know....
   "Nobody here has in any way, shape or form mistreated that man. I think all of you need to know that.
   "He came to me last April and talked about retiring. He said he'd decided he wanted to retire. That was the first I'd heard about it.
   "I asked him 'Well, when do you want to do this?'
   "He said he'd talk some more first.
   "So we decided what we were going to do, and we'd filed with the SEC to pay him $12,500 a month for 10 years.
   "I asked him when he wanted to announce it, and he said Wednesday after the 600. I said okay.
   "Then, without telling me, he decided to announce it Wednesday before the 600. I don't know why he did that; I still don't know.
   "I did something else for him – He had about 151,000 stock options (then worth nearly $4 million) that he was standing to lose, until I came up with a way to save those for him. We would hire him as a consultant, for five years for $1,000 a month…even though we didn't plan to be consulting with him about anything."
   One key point, Smith said, came just before last year's 600:
   "It may have been a few days after that second meeting, when he said 'I'd like a $5 million exit bonus.' I said we could not do that," Smith said.
   "I think his attitude changed after I said that. No one knew anything about that, did you?
    "Now when I retire, in 20 or 30 years, I won't be asking for a $5 million bonus…..
   "He retired of his own will. Period, period, period.
   "Now if there are any questions about that, I'd like to get that all out here today. I have no secrets about this, I want y'all to know this.
   "And I think, from some of the things that have been said, some day there may be an apology, you hope, in place.
    "I made Humpy a lot of money; he's worth about $26 million right now, and I'm proud of that.
   "Some of this stuff I hear….it's aggravating when you know you've done the right thing and you know how good you've been to somebody. I guess his pay averaged over $1 million.
   "Somewhere along the line you want to say 'Give me a break.' And I think that's what I'm saying here."
  
  

  
But the show must go on....(Photo: Harold Hinson/Lowe's Motor Speedway)