FONTANA, Calif. — Southern California is known for its love of cars and car culture. But that hasn’t necessarily produced an enduring love affair with stock car racing.
NASCAR has maintained a strong presence in the region for more than 50 years, at notable venues including Riverside Raceway and Ontario Motor Speedway.
In recent years, however, it has sometimes struggled to succeed in the Los Angeles market despite the fact that California native drivers Jeff Gordon, Jimmie Johnson and Kevin Harvick have combined to win 11 Cup series championships since 1995.
It’s difficult now to imagine that the Cup series used to start and finish the season at California tracks. The Riverside road course hosted the season opener from 1963 to 1981, and, when Ontario closed in 1981 after a 10-year run, it took over as the venue for the season finale. Riverside was also the site of an annual June race that was transferred to Sonoma Raceway when Riverside closed in 1988.
Roger Penske built California Speedway in 1997, and the sale of that track along with his interest in four other tracks to International Speedway Corp. in 1999 gave him the backing to start Penske Automotive Group, now the second-largest car dealer group in the world.
While Penske’s business exploits have thrived, the track now known as Auto Club Speedway has served as a poster child for growing pains that have resulted from ISC’s relentless expansion since its acquisition of the Penske tracks some 17 years ago.
ACS was built at the height of the NASCAR boom of the late 1990s, and its seating capacity was soon increased from 75,000 to 92,000. In 2004, the track was granted a second Cup race.
The good times didn’t last. Fontana’s second date came at the expense of Darlington Raceway’s traditional Labor Day slot, incensing longtime NASCAR fans. ISC’s constant switching of race dates didn’t help matters; the inaugural Cup race in 1997 was staged in June, it moved to late April/early May for a few years, then settled in as the second race of the year after Daytona before now occupying a late March slot as part of the West Coast swing.
After six years on Labor Day weekend, the fall race was pushed back into October for a couple of years before ISC transferred its date to Kansas Speedway. In a harbinger for other ISC tracks, Auto Club Speedway’s seating capacity was reduced to 68,000, but even that failed to sell out for a few years.
The track in Fontana is located about 50 miles from downtown Los Angeles and 75 miles from Orange County, and attracting fans and media out to the Inland Empire hasn’t been easy.
While IndyCar’s Long Beach Grand Prix maintained steady interest through the years, NASCAR races at ACS struggled for attendance and an attempt to bring open-wheel cars back to the Fontana oval after a few years away proved to be a failure.
The trend has turned around of late, in part helped by the appointment of Dave Allen as track president in 2015. Allen expects to record ACS’ third consecutive sellout this weekend for the Auto Club 400.
“This market is so unique from others, and that definitely sometimes makes it hard work,” Allen remarked. “We have a lot of challenges to overcome, and we’ve had to make a lot of changes over the last 10 years.
“We’ve always thought we have a lot to offer, and we think the quality of the racing the last few years is producing the demand.”
ACS has never been repaved since it opened, creating the most seasoned racing surface among asphalt tracks in the Sprint Cup Series. The track is wide and slick, with a coarse surface that produces high tire degradation. That has resulted in some pretty memorable Cup races at Fontana in recent years.
“The racing has been really good here as that track surface has aged,” observed Harvick, who scored his lone Fontana victory in 2011.
“I think this is the race we’ve all been looking forward to the most just because of the fact that you have some high speeds and lots of racing lanes and the cars are going to slide all over the place. So, it’s definitely a weekend that we’re all looking forward to. That bleeds over into the perception that the fans get, as well, because everybody is talking about enjoying racing on this particular track.”
Carl Edwards is another driver who believes the on-track action at Fontana in recent years is turning into a strong draw for fans.
“I’m pretty sure I can speak for all the drivers when I say we’ve been looking forward to this race,” Edwards commented. “I get a sense that everybody is really amped up about it, and the reason is you can really drive here. I mean, just watch the in-car camera. You get to work here, you get to use your skills as a race car driver.”
When ACS was enduring the worst of its attendance problems, track founder Penske suggested that Southern California was no longer a “two-race market,” a theory that Harvick, a native of Bakersfield, agrees with.
He’s pleased to see that Auto Club Speedway and ISC in general seem to be learning that, no matter how popular your product might be, it’s possible to have too much of a good thing.
“I think this racetrack is a great example of a lot of lessons that a lot of people who run racetracks obviously don’t pay attention to,” Harvick said. “Sometimes, if you take one really great thing, you can really easily make them into two mediocre things. I would say 90 percent of them are one-race markets, but a lot of them still have two races and you just see those mediocre crowds.
“I don’t understand that with racetracks a lot of the time, but this one has come full circle,” he added. “When you look at the crowds that we’ve had over the last couple of years, they’ve been really good, and I think everything is going well for this particular track.”
