LOUDON - The New Hampshire International Speedway, by the numbers, looks like this: 1,500 feet down the straightaways, 1.058 miles of track, 300 laps. And this: 150,000 spectators, 1,000-plus acres of parking, 31 outfield restrooms and 425 port-a-potties.

It also has four helipads, a six-bed hospital and a five-lane, 3½-mile paved artery - the Gil Rogers Highway - that bisects the parking lots.

"We have everything - from security to sanitation - that a city of 100,000 has," said Ron Meade, a track spokesman. That includes medical emergencies: "I don't think we've had a birth yet, but we've had just about everything else you could imagine."

Race fans Alex , 8, and his dad Rick Tarduiff of Lyman, Maine watch the Whelan Modified Tour during the NASCAR weekend at NHIS yesterday. DAN HABIB / Monitor staff Zoom Purchase Photos Online

The speedway complex is a city that hums with life - generators abuzz in the parking lot, vendors on every walkway, fans jammed cheek-by-jowl in the 91,000-seat bleachers - for less than a week at a time. But during those brief periods, it holds more people than Manchester (population, 109,000), the state's largest city, and is roughly 25 times as dense.

Of the 150,000 spectators over the three days of racing, the largest crowd will gravitate toward the track tomorrow, when 101,000 are expected to watch the sold-out New Hampshire 300, including more than 1,000 who will watch from the climate-controlled environs of the 36 VIP suites atop the grandstands.

The track employs 22 full-time workers, 50 summer employees and another 1,500 people hired to work the races, doing everything from directing parking to manning the concession stands under the bleachers - where 10,200 hot dogs, 19,800 hamburgers and 11,000 gallons of Aquafina are sold every race, Meade said. Those quantities don't come close to satisfying the appetites of the race crowd, which does most of its eating beyond the concession stands - at tailgate barbecues, at private food vendors or off the grounds in the Loudon-Concord area.

More than 76 percent of the people in the crowd come from out of state, "so that really helps the rooms and meals tax considerably - and the tolls at Hooksett," Meade said. The existence of the track supports the equivalent of more than 2,500 full-time jobs outside the speedway grounds, including 275 workers in the lodging industry, 306 in the food-and-beverage field and 641 in retail, according to NHIS estimates. Impact studies commissioned by the Greater Concord Chamber of Commerce in the late 1990s showed that race fans spent $50 million a year in the Concord area, and that number has likely increased since.

Last year, the track started charging RVs and campers for parking - $100 in advance; $125 at the gate - to preserve room on the grounds for cars, which are still allowed to park for free, Meade said. Even at that price, nearly 8,000 RVs still park on-site at each race - meaning roughly $1 million changes hands for motor-home and camper parking at NHIS alone.

In addition to the 1,500-plus track employees, another 165 merchants and vendors - from multi-trailer extravaganzas, like the Army Mobile Interactive Unit, to the smallest ice cream stands - and their workers set up on the NHIS grounds; then there are also the various peddlers of T-shirts, sunglasses and hot dogs who sprout outside the gates, along Route 106. And the 160 teams competing in the various racing series bring anywhere from a handful to a coupledozen racers, crew members and affiliated employees each, Meade said.

Everybody at the track has a different number in mind. For Josh Caldwell, one of several scanner salesmen scattered around the track, the figure is 1,000 - the number of Raceceiver scanners, priced at $100 to $150, he and his coworkers expect to sell. The radios allow fans to pick up on the chatter between pit crews and drivers, allowing them to feel even closer to the action. "Probably about 40 percent of the race fans have them already," said Caldwell, who works about 35 NASCAR races a year. "Of course, there's always newcomers."

For Mike Shields, an independent merchandise vendor who has enough colorful driver flags to outfit a NASCAR Model UN, the most pressing figure is 840 - as in the cost, in dollars, for six nights in a local motel room, where he and three of his employees cram in a few hours of sleep a night, between workdays that can last 16 to 20 hours.

"And that's at the Super 8,"Shields said, groaning about the price. "That's not even top-class."

Between renting the space at the track, paying for the motel room and other costs, Shields has to sell $12,000 worth of souvenirs at a race weekend just to meet his expenses, he said. That figure used to be closer to $10,000, but gas prices - he pulls his two heavy merchandise trailers with a Ford E350 cargo van and an F350 pickup -have crimped his operation, since he averages 10 miles per gallon in one vehicle and six in the other.

Shields likes the life on the road - when he's here, his wife runs the couple's three sports-card shops back in Indiana - and appreciates the race atmosphere after spending the first 33 years of his working life as a barber. But he could do without the pickpockets - he lost seven hats in a single day once in Kentucky - and the toll of so many meals on the road. "We're eating bologna today," he said. "Ah, lord."

"It ain't as glamorous as some people think," Shields added, leaning on a clothing rack. As far as tracks are concerned, though, he gave NHIS high marks for cleanliness and security, as well as for free-spending fans. He rated the New Hampshire souvenir-buyers near the top, trailing only Daytona. With any luck, he'll sell enough $20 or $25 T-shirts and hats to carry him to his next destination, a NASCAR Busch Series race in Colorado next weekend.

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