NASCAR shares update on future of Fontana, Southern California racing

Amid questions about the future of NASCAR in Southern California, NASCAR president Steve Phelps confirmed that the demolition of the Auto Club Speedway in Fontana has already begun.

Phelps explained that the plan is to replace the current two-mile oval with a short track. Outside of that, NASCAR announced very few details, like a time frame for the construction project to take place.

“I would say that we are still planning on building a short track in Fontana; what the timing of that is, I don’t know,” Phelps said. “This isn’t the best time to be building based on inflation, the cost of capital, etc. But our intention is to continue to be in the Southern California market. For 2024, it will be at the Coliseum (for The Clash preseason all-star exhibition). It is our intention to build a short track in the Inland Empire.”

The final race at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana was at the end of February. Shortly following that, the sale of 433 acres of land by NASCAR for $544 million to Hillwood Investment Properties and CBRE Investment Management came to light. Again, no further details were released.

“We’ve got renderings,” Phelps said. “We’ve got what it looks like. We are ready to go when the time is right.”

San Bernardino County documents note that the new short track would be 0.67 miles long. That’s contradictory to reports that it would be a half-mile track in a kind of blend between Martinsville and Bristol.

The Clash at the Los Angeles Coliseum started in 2022 on a three-year contract. However, once the deal expires, it seems likely that NASCAR is going to move the event to a new location, adding to concerns about the future of NASCAR in Southern California.

“That’s a good question that we’re not ready to talk about because we’re not going to talk about the ’25 schedule,” Phelps said. “But the Southern California market is important to us.”

Danica Patrick says NASCAR races are ‘way too long’

Amid decreasing television ratings and competition from sources like Formula One, analyst and retired driver Danica Patrick made it clear that she thinks races are too long.

“I sat down actually with one really important person within NASCAR… one of the things I said was, ‘the races are way, way too long.’ People’s consuming habits change… because people can’t keep their attention span long enough. So, when you’re asking them to sit in front of a television for five or six hours, with pre-race and the race and everything, that’s a lot of time to expect someone to be attentive,” Patrick said.

Sports all have their ebbs and flows. Formula One is on the rise, but NASCAR is struggling a little bit more. And there was a time when Formula One wasn’t really a blip on the radar here in the States and NASCAR drivers were everything. A lot of that correlates with, yes, the product, but also the marketability of the drivers within it and the personalities. NASCAR has suffered a lot of losses when it comes to their personalities with  a lot of the big famous names being gone. There was Jeff Gordon, Dale Earnhardt jr. and Tony Stewart and myself and Carl Edwards… I’m sure that Formula One will have its dip in popularity somewhere down the line and other motorsports will be on the rise.”