It was two weeks before another NASCAR weekend, and a quiet calm had descended on Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
With nine racing venues and extracurricular events, the speed plant on Interstate 15 north of Las Vegas is humming most days of the year, according to Chris Powell, its president and general manager for the past 26 years and change.
But this was one of the rare muted ones, allowing Powell to count his blessings — if not the days preceding his impending retirement — without the accompaniment of revving engines and squealing tires.
“When I got here, I didn’t know anything about running a racetrack,” the 65-year-old executive said about occupying the corner office in the administration building for all of LVMS’ NASCAR weekends except the inaugural one in 1998.
“But I did know something about Southern hospitality.”
Powell grew up in Ahoskie, North Carolina, a whistle stop in the rural northeast corner of the Tar Heel State known as the Inner Banks. On the day he introduced himself to the LVMS staff, he recalled having breakfast at the since shuttered Hard Rock Hotel.
When he asked his server for a spoon for his coffee, she pointed to where they were. So he got up and retrieved his own spoon, “which I’m fully capable of doing.”
But, as he would impress upon the rank and file, “The Hard Rock Hotel could have had the best general manager, the best marketing team, the best PR team, the best operational staff, the best housekeepers painting the walls — they could have had the best operation in all of Las Vegas. But at that moment, that server was the Hard Rock Hotel to me.”
As retirement looms in his rearview mirror — former Shriners Children’s Open executive director Patrick Lindsey will replace him after Sunday’s Pennzoil 400 — Powell said he has so many to thank, beginning with a staff that for 26-plus years has rarely if ever asked a visitor to get his own spoon.
“I’ve never run a speedway before, so I’m going to make some mistakes — we’re going to make some mistakes,” Powell said about his introductory remarks to LVMS employees.
“The only thing I’m going to demand is that we’re going to be nice to our customers, we’re going to be nice to the sponsors, the drivers, the owners, the racing officials, the media, and we’re going to be nice to each other. If we can accomplish that, everything else will take care of itself.”
Powell then politely excused himself before returning with a cherished keepsake.
“… So at one point I was given this, by our employees,” he said, gently sliding an award plaque across his desk.
The simple inscription bore his name and a date: Dec. 22, 1998. That was the day he asked the staff to be kind and hospitable to visitors.
The only adornment on the plaque was a silver spoon.
Diamonds are forever
Like most boys from North Carolina, Chris Powell was exposed to college basketball and stock car racing during his formative years. He graduated from the University of North Carolina a year before a guy named Jordan sank the winning basket in the Tar Heels’ NCAA championship game victory over Georgetown.
But he said it was baseball that provided his biggest thrill as a young sports writer.
In 1974, while still in high school, Powell covered the pursuit of free-agent pitcher Catfish Hunter for the thrice weekly newspaper in the aspiring reporter’s hometown.
“I’ll never forget reading in the Raleigh paper that Catfish Hunter had been declared a free agent and that major league teams were expecting to come and visit with his attorney in Ahoskie,” Powell said about how he spent his Christmas vacation when he was 14.
He even won a steak dinner from Hall of Fame pitcher Gaylord Perry after they wagered on how much money Hunter would sign for. Perry invited the young scribe and his pal Ricky May, who would become Powell’s head of sales and marketing at LVMS, to his home in Williamston, North Carolina, to settle their bet.
“Gaylord was sipping red wine, and he said the steak that was on the plate had been walking around a field a few days earlier,” Powell recalled.
Later, he became the beat writer for the Durham Bulls just before the movie characters Crash Davis (Kevin Costner) and Annie Savoy (Susan Sarandon) made the Carolina League franchise minor league baseball’s most popular team.
Powell transitioned to a career as a sports executive with R.J. Reynolds Tobacco, which at the time sponsored the Nabisco and Vantage pro golf tours and auto racing’s NHRA and NASCAR championships.
“I’ll never forget my first day at Pomona (California, site of the NHRA’s prestigious Winternationals),” he said. “I get out of my car, and all I can hear is those Top Fuel motors. And I’m thinking I just left a sport (golf) where they hold up a sign that says ‘Quiet Please’ for this?
“But I fell in love with the NHRA drivers and officials, who were always accessible and appreciative. We had a lot of fun on the drag racing circuit, and then they moved me over to the NASCAR side.”
Where he was to fall in love all over again.
A Daytona 500 to remember
Being something of a history buff, Chris Powell has a knack for remembering the key dates in his life.
The one that first comes to mind is Feb. 16, 1997. It was the day Jeff Gordon won the 39th Daytona 500 and, much more significant to Powell, the day he met his wife, Missy.
They were introduced by her sister, Paige, who was working in sales at Bristol (Tennessee) Motor Speedway, and they got married that December. The following March, newlyweds Chris and Missy Powell attended the inaugural NASCAR Cup Series race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
They were back for good in December 1998, when Powell was appointed LVMS general manager by Speedway Motorsports mogul Bruton Smith.
Smith had just purchased LVMS from Las Vegas resort owners Ralph Engelstad and Bill Bennett, and Richie Clyne, the track’s only other general manager. Powell said Clyne’s vision combined with the Smith family’s deep pockets helped him go from zero to 200 mph in no time flat, as LVMS quickly evolved into one of auto racing’s premier venues.
“Richie had a good line,” Powell said in deference to his fellow Southern Nevada Sports Hall of Fame inductee. “He said he baked the cake, but he needed Bruton and his team to come in and put the icing on it.”
Powell said were it not for Clyne and Mel Larson, a former NASCAR competitor and Circus Circus executive, and benefactors Engelstad and Bennett, LVMS never would have come to fruition.
“They also had a lot to do with Bruton purchasing the facility,” Powell said. “And Marcus (Smith), Bruton’s son, has really made his mark with some of the vision he’s had in the modern day NASCAR” since the death of his father in 2022.
Expanding the footprint
Before the advent of the speedway and the arrival of the Golden Knights and Raiders, major league sports in Las Vegas mostly was limited to golf tournaments, boxing and the National Finals Rodeo. But those were events staged in existing or temporary arenas.
Powell’s LVMS tenure paralleled the political regime of Oscar and Carolyn Goodman as mayors of Las Vegas. Both credited the speedway with inspiring other brick and mortar facilities, such as T-Mobile Arena and Allegiant Stadium, that have dramatically extended Las Vegas’ destination footprint.
“All I can tell you is Chris is the face that will always be associated with the speedway,” Carolyn Goodman said. “You look at Las Vegas becoming a sports and entertainment capital, but he’s been the one that has been here all along.”
Added Oscar Goodman: “Bruton Smith was the power source that brought the races to Las Vegas, but Chris provided the huge thrust that made the NASCAR events the way Bruton wanted them to be.”
With Powell overseeing additions such as the Neon Garage, towering spectator terraces, a state of the art dragstrip and a reconfiguration of the superspeedway that improved the racing product, Las Vegas landed a second Cup Series race and lucrative nonautomotive events such as the Electric Daisy Carnival, pumping even more tourism dollars into the city coffers.
“Chris was old school; he always delivered more than he promised,” said casino owner Michael Gaughan, whose South Point Hotel sponsors the NASCAR playoff race at LVMS.
“The speedway has been good for the town. It brings in a lot of customers, and a lot of them stay at my hotel. The track is going to miss Chris, and I’m going to miss him. He’s been a good friend.”
He won’t get any argument from NASCAR headquarters.
“Chris understood how to engage and entertain fans, which explains why Las Vegas Motor Speedway evolved into a bucket-list destination over the past 26 years,” NASCAR chief operating officer Steve O’Donnell said.
Hitting the road
The quiet calm enveloping the speedway on the day Chris Powell talked about his decision to retire seems also to have absorbed him.
To use an auto racing analogy, he is not terribly interested in pursuing NASCAR overtime when his Foretravel recreational vehicle is loaded up and ready to roll.
“As I pressed into my early 60s, my mental approach changed,” he said. “I realized there’s a lot more behind me than there is in front of me. We want to stay here as far as our permanent residence, but Missy and I love RVing, so we also want to spend some time doing that.
“I love golf, but I also want to do something else. My hope would be to build an RV park somewhere in the middle of North Carolina. That’s kind of a heady project, but I think if I can get the right piece of land and the right kind of investment, I can do it.”
So whereas most guys figuratively ride off into the sunset, Powell plans to do it literally.
“As we speak, we have five grandkids, and by the time this comes out, we’re gonna have two more (his son Russ and daughter-in-law Ashly became parents of identical twin girls Thursday). We’ve got three grandsons here and four on the East Coast, so we want to spend more time with them,” he said.
“To this day, I love being in the office. But the responsibility of being here is something that I’m willing to part with no matter how much fun it has been these past 26-plus years.”
As for what the future holds for his adopted sport, Powell believes NASCAR and the speedway will keep the pedal to the metal as it navigates the ebb and flow of a popularity wave long since crested.
“People consume the sport differently now than they did 25 years ago,” he said. “They can watch it on their phones, their iPads, their flat screen TVs. There are any number of reasons not to attend. But still there’s nothing like being there when the grand marshal says ‘gentlemen, start your engines!’”
He said there’s a lot he’s going to miss about the speedway, beginning with the visceral thrill of race day that, unlike the names of the drivers and the paint schemes of their cars, never changes.
“The sound, the smell, the (buzz) at the end of the national anthem. The Thunderbirds fly over, and then what’s about to unfold — 267 laps, 40 (cars and drivers) out there slicing and dicing on the racetrack.
“And you stand there and look out at the crowd and see the excitement on people’s faces, and you feel a certain sense of responsibility for that,” Chris Powell said in anticipation of hearing the quiet calm explode around him one last time.
Ron Kantowski is a retired sports writer who worked 36 years at Las Vegas newspapers, including 15 at the Review-Journal, covering motor sports.
Chris Powell’s top 5 memories
— Las Vegas Motor Speedway has been named Speedway Motorsports’ “Speedway of the Year” 10 times in the past 13 years.
— Securing a second NASCAR Cup Series date for Las Vegas beginning in 2018.
— Instrumental in bringing the Electric Daisy Carnival music festival to LVMS, its home since 2011.
— Induction into the Southern Nevada Sports Hall of Fame in 2013. LVMS became the first venue to be enshrined in 2023.
— Since his arrival in 1999, the LVMS chapter of Speedway Children’s Charities has distributed more than $6 million to children-related organizations in the Las Vegas community.
