Wheeling & dealing: cars made Bruton Smith very rich. No wonder seems to believe 'it's my way or the highway.'.

• Author: Martin, Edward
• Position: Cover story

Vintage warplanes rumble low over southern Cabarrus County. Below, they pray, a bugler sounds taps, and a bald eagle soars over the infield during "The Star-Spangled Banner." Aaron Causey rolls his wheelchair forward--a Taliban bomb took his legs and maimed his hands. The Army sergeant and his wife, Kat, lean into a microphone, and their voices echo across the grandstands: "Drivers, start your engines!" It's Memorial Day weekend, and more than 100,000 fans leap to their feet as the 36,000 horsepower of 43 race cars sets the grandstands trembling.

A violent stream of sound and color explodes across the starting line, with eventual winner Kevin Harvick's Budweiser Chevrolet splashed in red, white and blue and sprinkled with stars. The Coca-Cola 600 is high-octane NASCAR patriotism, and as the pack rockets out of the second turn, its 200 mph shock wave ruffles an American flag the size of a football field swathing a section of Charlotte Motor Speedway's backstretch stands. The banner is one of the biggest in the nation, but what it conceals is flagging attendance. Under it hide more than 5,000 unsold seats, though the speedway has removed at least 25,000. "You don't want to show that to folks back home," says Craig Depken, a sports economist at UNC Charlotte who studies NASCAR. Charlotte Motor Speedway once claimed a capacity of 172,000. Now, it's officially 134,000.

Cars and racing have made the speedway's founder rich, but his numbers have dropped, too. As recently as 2006, Ollen Bruton Smith was midfield on Forbes magazine's list of the 400 richest Americans, with a fortune estimated at $1.4 billion. Post-recession, that has shrunk by half, but he's still the only individual with controlling interest of two corporations on BUSINESS NORTH CAROLINA'S list of the largest public companies based in the state (page 56). Sonic Automotive Inc., his chain of 111 car dealerships, is No. 33, with market value of about $1.1 billion. Speedway Motorsports Inc., which owns eight tracks that host 13 races in NASCAR's top series, ranks 37th, with about $740 million.

The speedway, which is in Concord, is the nucleus of a regional racing industry with an annual economic impact of $4.7 billion, according to a UNC Charlotte study of 2005 data. That's why Smith made headlines when, a week before the Coca-Cola 600 in May, he mentioned moving one of its two top-tier races to his Las Vegas track. "Money, money, money," he muttered, hinting he could make more of it in Nevada--plus financial incentives he might wheedle from Vegas boosters. (This came mere months after claiming he would be interested in buying the Carolina Panthers from Jerry Richardson, and that he'd keep the team in Charlotte without demanding local and state money for renovations to Bank of America Stadium--an altruistic gesture he hasn't extended to Cabarrus County.) Though he quickly backed off the threat, it was the second one he had made in recent years.

Meanwhile, his companies, both dented by the recession that began in 2007, are...