NASCAR prepares for its farewell to Fontana
FONTANA, Calif. — Most of NASCAR’s Cup Series drivers feel like they’re saying their final goodbye to a dear old friend this weekend.
The aging track at Auto Club Speedway seems to be adored by every professional driver on the continent. Those two miles of gloriously weathered asphalt allow them to be their best selves, providing the ideal combination of grip and space for nimble maneuvers in the perfectly banked corners, thrilling passes from the apron to the wall, and even five-wide racing at times during a quartercentury of mostly memorable Sundays.
“I’m going to miss everything about this track,” Joe Gibbs Racing’s Martin Truex Jr. said. “Hopefully we can go out on a high note on the last time around here.”
Indeed, the second race of the current Cup Series season will be the last before the beloved pavement is torn up in Fontana, ostensibly to clear the way for what will become a short track. The venue won’t host a NASCAR weekend in 2024, and the new setup might not be ready until 2026, if it happens at all.
So this farewell is happening under a cloud — a whole bunch of them, actually.
Steady rain and a few tentative snow flurries forced the cancellation of practice and qualifying Saturday. The secondtier Xfinity Series race nearly started during an afternoon break in the precipitation, but that, too, was eventually postponed to Sunday night after the rain kicked up again with the temperature 41 degrees at Auto Club Speedway.
In the meantime, drivers reminisced about the freedom and speed they’ve enjoyed on sunnier days in this industrial suburb east of Los Angeles.
“To me, it’s a driver’s dream,” Team Penske’s Ryan Blaney said. “It’s a big race track. It’s incredibly wide. The progressiveness of each lane, the banking, is the right kind of degree change. Tires fall off. You ask drivers, ‘What’s your dream race track?’ And it’s a wide track where drivers can search around for grip.”
Southern California native Jimmie Johnson, the seven-time Cup Series champion, won here six times. Kyle Busch, from Las Vegas, has won four times. Most of the great drivers in the past 25 years from NASCAR as well as the open-wheel CART and IndyCar circuits have reached victory lane in Fontana.
But soon the bumpy back stretch, the coarse asphalt and the competitive corners will be gone. NASCAR, which owns and operates the facility, has been planning a redesign since 2020 to service the latest trend in stock car racing, a desire for more short tracks.
Any faint hope of a reprieve seemingly vanished during the week when Sports Business Journal reported NASCAR has reached an agreement to sell about 80% of the large property for a nine-figure sum. It’s unclear whether the conversion plans would even happen under new ownership.
The drivers realize whatever happens after Sunday — or Monday, depending on the weather — is out of their control.
“Sad is probably the first reaction,” said Penske’s Joey Logano, a two-time Cup Series champion who has often finished well — but not first — in Fontana. “But business is business, and how do you go against that? When you hear what some of the numbers were, how do you not take that?
“And here’s the part that makes me feel a little better about it: Yes, the racing here is spectacular. It’s probably one of the best tracks we have, period. But the facts are, it’s getting old. The asphalt is coming apart, and if we were to repave it and just leave it the same (configuration), the racing would be awful. It’s just the end of an era.”
Hendrick Motorsports’ Kyle Larson won last year’s race at the track, and it’s also where the California native posted his first Cup Series career win in 2017.
“I’m sad to see it go, but on the flip side, I’m actually really excited about what’s ahead,” the 2021 Cup Series champ said. “For the betterment of our sport, I do think we need more short tracks. I applaud everybody at this race track if they’re going to reconfigure it, and taking a financial risk to better their facility and crowd and the sport.”
Drivers are divided on what they would like to see next in Fontana. Some like the half-mile tracks to create the bumpy, hottempered races that get TV ratings, while others favor a little variety.
“I don’t know that we really need another half-mile,” Truex said. “I think something between there and a mile would be good.”
NASCAR hopes for a Sunday respite from a spectacular storm, but that’s not the only problem. Even if the rain abates, old asphalt is notoriously difficult to dry because of weepers — the moisture that collects under the surface and then seeps through the cracks after a rainfall.
“The track is definitely going to be sad, because it’s getting torn down, so it’s obviously going to weep,” Hendrick driver Alex Bowman said with a grin.
Given their familiarity with this circuit, the drivers aren’t concerned after the weather kept them off the track Saturday.
“Everyone kind of got used to that,” Larson said of the pandemic years, when practice and qualifying were altered. “It would be a different question if this was last year and we had a brand-new racing car.”
Kevin Harvick’s record 29th start in Fontana will double as his 750th consecutive Cup Series start, which ranks third in the circuit’s history. The 47-yearold Stewart-Haas Racing driver plans to retire from full-time competition after this season.
“It’s always tough to see a race track that is in the fun to drive phase go away,” he said, “because you’ll never put the asphalt down that way again.”