Watkins Glen president a testament to diversity

In his time at The Glen, Printup counts as his biggest coup the car swap between three-time Sprint Cup champion Tony Stewart and F1 star Lewis Hamilton in June 2011. Even a steady rain on that cold morning didn’t dampen anyone’s spirits, not with a Formula One car screaming around the 3.4-mile Watkins Glen long course, the echo of its high-revving engine reverberating for miles around.

“For me, personally, that was probably, right now, the pinnacle,” Printup said. “That was something I personally worked on for two years with Mobil 1. To get those guys to come up and do something like that was huge. When you put a Formula One car on this racetrack, it brought back a lot of memories.

“Somebody just asked me yesterday, `When are you bringing that back?’ That was a once-in-a-lifetime thing. It’s not going to happen again, at least in the near future, but we’d love for it to. It was pretty cool.”

Printup does free coffee and doughnuts on race weekends for all campers and has a camp site in the infield where he interacts with the clientele. Thousands attend both events and Printup smiled, nodding in affirmation, when asked if attendance for the Sprint Cup road race three weeks ago was up over 2011, bucking a recent trend in a sport that’s seen its on-track attendance suffer mightily in the troubled economy. (ISC does not disclose attendance figures at its race tracks).

“We’re very proud of his track record, no pun intended,” Saunders said of Printup. “In terms of running a racetrack, I’ve been very pleased with the progress in advancing men and women of different cultures throughout our company _ Homestead-Miami has a largely Hispanic staff.

“It’s an ongoing journey. This is not something you just say, `Well, we crossed the finish line. We’re done with that.’ The face of America will always evolve, and you have to evolve with it.”

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