CONCORD, N.C. – Marcus Smith knew from the start that he was stepping out on a limb by changing Charlotte Motor Speedway’s annual fall race weekend from the oval-track configuration to the facility’s revamped infield road course layout.

However by the end of Sunday’s inaugural Bank of America ROVAL 400, fewer people carried a bigger smile than the Speedway Motorsports Inc. President and CEO, in the wake of a thrilling race that featured furious on-track battles and a last-turn fight for the race win that devolved into mayhem and saw Ryan Blaney come through the smoke on top.

Smith joined the media after the wild ending and beamed as he soaked in the aftermath of one of NASCAR’s most-memorable finishes in recent history, a day that saw a seven-time champion go for broke in the last corner and miss the playoffs as a result, while one of the sport’s young stars etched his name into the record books as the inaugural Cup Series winner at the 17-turn, 2.28-mile circuit.

All of that, combined, was a scenario that Smith admitted he couldn’t have even come close to scripting.

“Sitting here makes me feel like I just won the race; it really does,” said Smith. “It was really an amazing day. It’s been a three‑year journey to get here, and everything just kind of culminated today and throughout this week. I think everything that we saw on track, the competition was really phenomenal.  The track was very raceable, and we saw cars go two-wide … three-wide on a couple of occasions where there was a lot of concern about the width of the track and being able to race without a lot of red flags.

“I wanted there to be an opportunity to pass for the lead, for the win on that last lap. What happened is not what I had imagined or necessarily hoped for, but I do think it was incredibly exciting,” he added. “The roar from the fans was all I needed to hear to know that that was a moment that everybody will remember for a long time.”

Smith wasn’t ready to rush and put a success label on Sunday’s race in the immediate moments that followed, but he did offer insight into what he’ll use to determine just how successful the ROVAL weekend was for Charlotte Motor Speedway and Speedway Motorsports.

“My metric is highlight‑worthy moments.  That’s the metric that I use, and I think we were full of them today,” noted Smith. “Every time I saw camera people, photographers this entire week, they had been grinning ear to ear because they have so much to capture. That’s a huge win for all of us.”

One thing Smith did hint at as a future possibility, however, was the potential of night racing at the ROVAL.

“I’ve had a few people talk about night racing on the ROVAL, and that ‑‑ who knows,” Smith admitted.  “I know there’s at least one night (road) race. F-1 has their night race. So I do think that that’s a possibility.

“Right now I think we’re going to take some time to kind of bring all the ideas together.  … We have this repository of ideas that we email to a particular address in the team, and it’s just chock full of them. We’ll take all those things, pull them together, and think about what we can do to make things better for the future. We’re always sort of in a constant state of improvement and passion to make things fantastic and exceed expectations.”

For a facility that has hosted the first nighttime superspeedway race, built what was at the time the largest high-definition television and been at the forefront of innovation in NASCAR for years, Sunday’s thriller on the ROVAL was simply one more stellar notch in Charlotte’s long and storied history.

“I think this was another one of those amazing, memorable moments … certainly for me, and I think for NASCAR, as well,” Smith stated. “When you think about great moments, I think you recall the first time we ever turned on lights here at Charlotte Motor Speedway and had One Hot Night for the All‑Star, and now you have today with the inaugural Bank of America Roval 400.

“For me, this weekend really lived up to the hype.”