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LUCAMA, Nov 07, 2009 (The News and Observer - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- The owner of Southern National Raceway Park hopes to auction off the track in less time than it takes to run a race on its angled oval.

The sale, scheduled for noon Nov. 24, has stirred interest in potential buyers across the nation and raised hopes for the return of regular racing to a region where the roar of an engine is a siren song.

The place can hold 4,500 people in its metal grandstands. Racer Daniel Watkins recalls many Saturday nights when the only place left from which to watch the action was pressed against the perimeter fence.

"It kind of became a local hot spot. Everyone in the area went to the race track on Saturday night, took their family, took their kids," said Watkins, who started going to the track when he was 8 years old to watch his father race. "As people went, more and more and got more interested, they went from being fans to being racers or working on the cars."

In recent years, though, attendance at auto races has declined, even for major NASCAR events, with fans citing high ticket prices, the cost of travel and hotel rooms, and a perceived sedation of the sport caused by rule changes. Critical corporate sponsorship of racing teams has dwindled as companies reduce spending in a contracting economy.

Last year, several races were canceled at Southern National; this year the track didn't schedule but a handful of events.

A few miles off Interstate 95 near Kenly -- 45 minutes east of Raleigh -- the track is a fuel-injected field of dreams, a saucer of blacktop between a stand of piney woods and rows of cotton and corn. Opened in 1993 as Southern National Speedway, it once held weekly races from March to November and until last year was the Triangle's only NASCAR-sanctioned track.

The track was designed by Francis Tuttle, who also designed Talladega Superspeedway and the Texas World Speedway. The turns are banked to 17 degrees, the straights to 7 degrees. The racing surface is 70 feet wide.

New owner, fix-ups

Raleigh-based home builder Kirk Leone bought the raceway in 2006 when he was still racing part time. He resurfaced the track, paved the dirt infield and spruced up the 18 skyboxes, which once rented for as much as $8,500 a year.

Leone tried to sell the track in 2008, but the most promising offer fell through. He announced in September that he would sell the track and its 123 acres at auction. A new owner with capital to invest could add a motocross track, a drag strip, and maybe a go-kart track.

Auctioneer Jimmy Johnson guesses it would take $3 million to build a track like this one. He won't say what Leone hopes to get for it.

"This is a great opportunity for a potential owner to get a top-notch facility at a very good market price," Leone said in a statement. He couldn't be reached by phone and didn't respond to e-mail.

"I feel this is a great time to offer the track up for auction. It will give the new owner time to get things ready to open up for the 2010 race season," his statement said.

It will be the first racetrack Johnson has auctioned, though he has disposed of a wide range of other property, including a Civil War battlefield and a county courthouse. Just this year, he has sold hardware, furniture and beauty-supply stores; a hog farm; a horse farm; an auto-body shop and a school.

Slow revival foreseen

Johnson says that in the auction business, the serious shoppers don't emerge until close to the sale date. With the auction three weeks away, he's getting a dozen calls a day now, from drivers who need a place where they can run the sophisticated tests that help keep their cars competitive, people who already own tracks and those who have always wanted to.

Watkins, the racer who is now in law school at Elon University, hopes a new owner can bring back the adrenaline rush that comes when the physics of internal combustion meet the geometry of the oval on a perfect Saturday night. He worries, though, that making the track profitable again might be the one thing that can't be rushed.

"It'll be a slow turnaround," he said.

martha.quillin@newsobserer.com or 919-829-8989

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Martha Quillin

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