for the Bass Pro Shops NRA Night Race from 1978 to 1994. On January 22, 1996, Larry Carrier sold the speedway to Bruton Smith's Speedway Motorsports, Inc. (SMI), at a purchase price of $26 million. At the time of the sale, the facility seated 71,000. On May 28 of the same year, the track's name was officially changed to Bristol Motor Speedway'''. By August, 15,000 seats had been added bringing the seating capacity to 86,000. BMS continued to grow and by April 1997, at 118,000 seats, it had surpassed the University of Tennessee's 102,000 seat Neyland Stadium to become the largest sports arena in Tennessee. The speedway also boasted 22 new skyboxes. For the 1998 Goody's 500, the speedway featured more than 131,000 grandstand seats and 100 skyboxes. Improvements to the speedway since Smith took possession are in excess of $50 million. Under Smith's ownership, all seating sections have been renamed for past race winners and NASCAR champions. The capacity for the 2000 Food City 500 was 147,000 as the Kulwicki Terrace and Kulwicki Tower were completed. Both were named after NASCAR star Alan Kulwicki, who was the reigning Cup Series champion when he died in a plane crash in 1993 while on his way to the spring race at Bristol, which he won the previous year. As a tribute to retiring star Darrell Waltrip, the entire Turn 3 and 4 sections were renamed in his honor in 2000, including a section of seats in Turn 4 near the start-finish line marked as alcohol free. (Waltrip refused to drive for a team in 1987 because its sponsor was associated with alcoholic beverages.) Sections were also named in honor of the Allison family and David Pearson as part of the renaming of grandstands. In both 2000 and 2001, the track was temporarily converted to a dirt track to host the World of Outlaws' Channellock Challenge. The conversion involved moving of red clay onto the track's surface. of sawdust were laid down first to cover the paved surface. The track was widened by to and the banking was reduced from 36° to somewhere between 22° to 24°. While the races proved to be very popular, the process of installing and removing a temporary surface required 14,000 truckloads of material to be shipped in and out of the track which wore heavily on the roads around the track. As has been the case