When will planned NASCAR track in Fontana be open | College News

NASCAR gained’t go to Southern California subsequent yr and there’s no certainty when the stock-car racing collection will return with construction on a new track in unincorporated San Bernardino County slowed.

NASCAR, which moved its 2025 season-opening occasion from the Coliseum to Winston-Salem, N.C., after three years, had hoped to race in Fontana subsequent yr, however the planned half-mile oval track being constructed on the positioning of the Auto Club Speedway gained’t be accomplished in time — and there’s no timeline for when it will be finished.

“What that looks like in the future remains to be seen,” Ben Kennedy, NASCAR’s govt vice-president and chief venue & racing data officer, stated when the 2025 schedule was launched this yr. “Unfortunately we weren’t able to have it on the 2025 schedule, but bullish about getting it back on the schedule.”

With the exception of 2021, when the schedule was hampered by the pandemic, NASCAR has run no less than one race in Southern California yearly since 1997, when the Fontana superspeedway opened on the positioning of the outdated Kaiser metal mill.

“It’s a massive market for us,” Kennedy added. “No. 2 in terms of the quantity of NASCAR fans, a huge media market for us. Strategically it makes a lot of sense for us to be in Southern California.”

The absence of the race additionally will take a chunk out of the native financial system. The UC Riverside Center for Economic Forecasting and Development, which was shuttered final yr, estimated that the NASCAR race had an financial influence of $148.7 million in its final survey in 2017. Adjusted for inflation, that will be practically $192 million at this time.

The two-mile, low-banked, D-shaped oval drew 85,000 followers for its first NASCAR occasion, however when the collection added a second annual race on the track in 2004, attendance fell and in 2014, the grandstands have been reconfigured to decrease capability to 68,000. NASCAR didn’t release attendance figures for its remaining race on the track final yr however stated it was offered out.

Ten days after that race, NASCAR offered 433 of the 522 acres of the track’s footprint to Ross Perot Jr.’s Dallas-based Hillwood Development company and CBRE Investment Management for roughly $569 million, reported to be a file price for an industrial land deal. The web site will be transformed into a logistics facility and industrial park with 6.6 million sq. toes of warehousing spacing, with NASCAR retaining possession of roughly 90 acres for a planned half-mile short track.

The essential grandstands, entrance straight, pit street and pit street suites, that are all that stay of the outdated raceway, are to be included into the new racing venue. But definitive plans on what the track will appear to be haven’t been launched.

Construction started on the web site final yr with the construct time on the track estimated at between 12 and 18 months. That timeline has proved overly optimistic.

“We have no updates on that effort at this time,” James Fuller, a spokesman for Hillwood and the Perot Group, stated final month. In the meantime, visitors across the web site on Cherry Avenue, sandwiched between the ten and 210 freeways, has snarled.

NASCAR has been trying to transition half of its racing collection from massive superspeedways to half-mile oval tracks like those at Bristol, Tenn., Martinsville, Va., and North Wilkesboro, N.C. The resized Fontana facility is an element of that transition.

“Our goal is really to be in Southern California long term,” Kennedy stated. “We’ve continued to work on our plans for Fontana. We have a number of different configurations and variations the team has been working on for what that track might look like [and] what are the other activities that could happen on that parcel of land that we have there.”

In the meantime, NASCAR is taking a look at different alternatives in Southern California, Kennedy stated, with reviews final spring saying the chances of a road race in San Diego have been being explored.

The headwinds seem to be pushing the opposite method, nevertheless. It was not too long ago introduced that the Irwindale Speedway, home to a selection of lower-tier NASCAR racing collection for a quarter-century, will host its remaining race on Dec. 21.

IDS Real Estate, which purchased the positioning in 2022, plans to bulldoze the track and construct an industrial park in its place.