By Dustin Dow
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Kentucky Speedway general manager Mark Cassis said it just got harder last year.

It was harder to market the Meijer 300 and harder to draw the 70,000-plus crowd that made the first two Busch Series events and Kentucky Speedway so notable. The Speedway sold out the race but fell short of 70,000 people for the first time.

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"We're in the entertainment business," Cassis said. "We have to deliver. We have an obligation to Meijer to give them a return on their investment."

So this year, Speedway officials brought in some must-see attractions. A track-record seven Nextel Cup drivers will compete in today's Meijer 300, four of them splitting time between today's race and Sunday's Cup race in Michigan.

The Cup drivers are Michael Waltrip, Robby Gordon, Kasey Kahne, Greg Biffle, Johnny Sauter, Johnny Benson and Derrike Cope. Waltrip, Biffle, Kahne and Gordon are working double duty in Kentucky and Michigan.

"It's huge," Cassis said of the impact of having so many Cup drivers in the race. "There's such a following toward the Nextel Cup Series. I think people want to see these stars. We do so much Nextel Cup testing, these guys know the facility and they know the track."

Cup drivers also know Kentucky Speedway has the second-largest purse for a standalone Busch race and the sixth-largest purse overall.

It's also the largest track in the nation without a Nextel Cup event, which attracts that series' drivers to test there.

"At this track there's tons of racing room low or high on the track," said Waltrip, who has tested at Kentucky numerous times in the past few years. "So it's kind of fun to start from the back, because you get to pass a lot of people."

The Meijer 300 is one of four Busch Series races that are not run either at the same track in conjunction with a Cup race or on a weekend when there is no Cup race. That means, for the four drivers racing in both races this weekend, there's plenty of travel going on between Kentucky and Michigan.

"I bought a jet about a month and a half ago," Biffle said. "I had been leasing a turbo prop before, but that wasn't fast enough to do what I need to do."

Normally, the advantage of doing the Busch and Cup races is that drivers get more track time because the races are on the same track. In practicing for a Busch race, a driver also would be feeling out the track for a Cup race.

This weekend, however, there is no edge given to drivers racing in both series.

"There's not a lot of benefit, zero benefit as far as track time," Biffle said. "I'm not going to help my Nextel Cup chances by racing at Kentucky, but if I didn't race (the standalone Busch events), I'd have no chance at coming close in the points."

Of the Cup drivers racing at Kentucky, Waltrip is in the best position in the Busch standings, at fifth place. Biffle is right behind in sixth. Both have raced full Cup and Busch seasons to date, so driving at Kentucky is a priority to stay in the points race. But for Waltrip, it's also a chance to race at what he considers to be one of the best tracks on the circuit.

"There's not another one that compares to it as far as standalone events," Waltrip said. "Your track has to be popular with the fans, and this one is."

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E-mail ddow@enquirer.com