MIS President Roger Curtis says next 10 weeks will be “dramatic, awesome”

In June, Jimmie Johnson played strategy to score the victory at Michigan International Speedway. In August, Jeff Gordon beat Joey Logano on a late race restart with 17 laps to go to score the victory at Michigan. Needless to say, both races this year were full of action for the fans in attendance, and watching from home.

“They were great,” MIS President Roger Curtis commented on the two races. “Kind of contrary to popular belief, ever since we repaved the racing has been fantastic. A lot of tracks, the common thought is that the racing won’t be good. Our races have been absolutely fantastic. They’ve certainly been fast- we’re the fastest track in NASCAR now. The fans have responded – especially this year with the wins by Jeff and Jimmie in our two races. I thought they were just two really entertaining races and we’ve heard a lot of feedback from the fans. Excited for next year already.”

Roger Curtis was in Toronto on Wednesday as part of Jeff Gordon’s “Chase Across Toronto” as NASCAR brought the four-time Sprint Cup Champion north of the border to promote the Chase for the Sprint Cup. Curtis joined the tour, greeting fans in Dundas Square on Wednesday afternoon as a bunch of Canadians travel to Michigan to watch the races.

“Over 20% of our fans are Canadian and it’s really been growing over the last couple of years,” Curtis noted. “We’re really honored by that. We think of ourselves as Canada’s home track. We fly the flag, play the anthem; we even have a money exchange window at the ticket booth in our fan plaza. We love the Canadians and they bring the best gifts, too. They bring Crown Royal, chairs, they bring with shirts with beavers – I love it. I have more Canadian stuff in my closet than American. It’s awesome.”

During the event, a fan brought a muskoka chair and presented it to Curtis. Curtis then got Gordon to sit in the chair before signing it to cap off the day.

While most tracks are always looking to get a premium Chase date on the schedule, Curtis is happy with the pair of dates that Michigan currently has in book-ending the summer. The track president added that if they were to move the dates to later in the season, they may lose their camp ground attendance with the weather being cooler and the kids being back in school.

Still, that doesn’t mean that Curtis isn’t excited about the upcoming 10 weeks.

“I’m really excited about it,” he commented. “It took me a bit to wrap my head around the championship coming down to one race. I really like the first three rounds and the drivers, if they have a bad race, they have a chance to come back and move on. Then when I really got thinking about it, I do like four drivers – one race. Your pit crew is going to have to be perfect, the car is going to have to be perfect, the driver is going to have to be perfect and you’re going to have a little bit of luck and that’s how it is for any sports team to win a championship. You have to have a little bit of everything working in your favor. I think the next 10 weeks are going to be real dramatic, real awesome. I know NASCAR fans are going to love it. I think it’s going to get some people who are like ‘I don’t know if I like NASCAR or not’, I think they’re going to get some of them off the fence and pumped up.”

As for who will be in the final four when the Sprint Cup Series gets to Homestead-Miami, Curtis was quick to name Jeff Gordon as one of the four.

“I think Jeff Gordon will be in there. I’m going to pick Brad Keselowski,” he said. “I’ll say Kevin Harvick is going to make it, and I think we will have a surprise like the NCAA basketball tournament. I think we’ll have a Cinderella. I don’t know if it’ll be Allmendinger, Biffle or Ryan Newman – I think we’ll have someone who didn’t win a race, one of the ones that got in on points. Maybe it’ll be Kenseth; I don’t know. I look for a surprise going into Homestead.”