FONTANA >> The mood was melancholy here Sunday, largely because so much of Auto Club Speedway’s future was unknown and therefore uncertain.
But by the end of the afternoon, after Kyle Busch won the final NASCAR Cup Series race on the 2-mile oval that played host to its first race in 1997, track president Dave Allen had reassurance for those race fans worried that Southern California, and particularly the Inland Empire, might be about to totally lose another track. There will be an announcement in the coming months, and there will be a brand-new racing facility on this land in years to come.
“I’m hopeful that we get to a point here in the near future, some time this year, (that) there’s going to be a few different bites at the apple as it relates to more information coming out and a timeline established,” Allen said.
“And honestly, I can’t wait to share some of the things that we’ve been working on from a design perspective, because we’ve been working on it for quite a while.”
It will be a short track, a half-mile oval, and the hints are that this will be what Allen called “the most state-of-the-art short track that’s ever been built,” a facility that not only will transform NASCAR racing in Southern California but could serve as a venue for regular local racing programs as well.
The references to the last race, which will be followed by at least one year off the Cup series schedule and maybe two, may have thrown all of us off. The competitors and the broadcasters treated it as the end of an era, as they should have, but the general public seemed uncertain whether “last race” referred to the last on the 2-mile oval or the last race ever.
Those fears weren’t soothed by a Friday report by Sports Business Journal, citing sources and public documents, that NASCAR, which owns the speedway, has closed on a deal to sell 433 of the property’s 522 acres to an entity called Speedway SBC Development LLC, with the sale price estimated at $544 million.
The publication further reported that the purchasing entity is tied to real estate developer Hillwood, a Dallas-based company that is working with NASCAR to, as SBJ put it, “sell off parts of its vast properties, as it sought to find new revenue streams and better utilize the huge amount of acreage it owns across the country.”
True. Allen noted that Hillwood is “a partner of ours as a company that’s helping us reassess all of our land holdings across the country,” and it is but one of many moving parts that NASCAR and the track administration have been dealing with.
But the report set off the conspiracy theorists on social media, who wondered if the 89 remaining acres would be enough to build a half-mile track plus parking and campgrounds, what the other land would be used for, and whether NASCAR might eventually throw in the towel, sell the rest of the land for development and close the track.
Maybe it’s because we’ve been here before, with the closings of Riverside International Racewayin 1989 and Ontario Motor Speedway, modeled after Indianapolis and itself advertised as state-of-the-art, in 1980, not to mention the closing of Ascot and the frequent threats to Irwindale Speedway. It’s understandable that local NASCAR fans might fear the worst, isn’t it?
“It just shows you how passionate the fan base is about what we have here in this two-mile track,” Allen said. “I’m one of them. I’ve been here 23 years. There’s a lot of emotion that’s boiling through me this weekend, and moments when you get sentimental about it. But at the same time, what we’re trying to do is solidify NASCAR, big-time NASCAR racing, here for a long time to come.
“I think we’re headed in the right direction. It just needs a little bit more time, a little bit more patience, and we’ll get it out there.”
The details will soothe a lot of nerves when they are unveiled. Allen equated it to building a home, and dealing with “so many different things that can go one way or another,” among them the land sale and dealing with local zoning issues and with San Bernardino County officials on what the new project will look like.
Sunday, when a pretty good crowd braved temperatures in the high 40s to show up for the final race, was a reminder of what we’re losing, if temporarily, starting with a ceremonial five-wide parade in front of the grandstand.
This was a track, particularly a track surface, that drivers hated early on but learned to love as it aged. This week, the competitors universally talked of how they’d miss it.
It was fitting that Busch, who won five Cup races all told on this track, won the last one.
“I mean, it’s a two-mile racetrack,” he said. “It’s big, it gets spread out. But, man, you can move around and you can spread out and you can make your own destiny by trying to find something else that’ll help work for your race car. It’s a sad day for me to see this racetrack (having) its last race being a two-mile configuration.
“...I hope the next track that we have puts on the show that we’ve been able to see here for the last 10-12 years. But repaves are always tough, man. It takes a good five years for a repave to turn into something that’s decent.”
We’ve got time.
PREVIOUS ARTICLE
