Sports

NASCAR wants to race again in Southern California, but when will it happen?

Published

1 year ago

November 8, 2024

NASCAR wants to race again in Southern California, but when will it happen?

NASCAR won’t visit Southern California next year and there’s no certainty when the stock-car racing series will return with construction on a new track in unincorporated San Bernardino County slowed.

NASCAR, which moved its 2025 season-opening event from the Coliseum to Winston-Salem, N.C., after three years, had hoped to race in Fontana next year, but the planned half-mile oval track being built on the site of the Auto Club Speedway won’t be completed in time — and there’s no timeline for when it will be done.

“What that looks like in the future remains to be seen,” Ben Kennedy, NASCAR’s executive vice-president and chief venue & racing information officer, said when the 2025 schedule was released this year. “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 at least one race in Southern California every year since 1997, when the Fontana superspeedway opened on the site of the old Kaiser steel 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 also will take a bite out of the local economy. The UC Riverside Center for Economic Forecasting and Development, which was shuttered last year, estimated that the NASCAR race had an economic impact of $148.7 million in its last survey in 2017. Adjusted for inflation, that would be nearly $192 million today.

The two-mile, low-banked, D-shaped oval drew 85,000 fans for its first NASCAR event, but when the series added a second annual race at the track in 2004, attendance fell and in 2014, the grandstands were reconfigured to lower capacity to 68,000. NASCAR did not release attendance figures for its final race at the track last year but said it was sold out.

Ten days after that race, NASCAR sold 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 approximately $569 million, reported to be a record price for an industrial land deal. The site will be converted into a logistics facility and industrial park with 6.6 million square feet of warehousing spacing, with NASCAR retaining ownership of approximately 90 acres for a planned half-mile short track.

The main grandstands, front straight, pit road and pit road suites, which are all that remain of the old raceway, are to be incorporated into the new racing venue. But definitive plans on what the track will look like have not been released.

Construction began at the site last year with the build 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, said last month. In the meantime, traffic around the site on Cherry Avenue, sandwiched between the 10 and 210 freeways, has snarled.

NASCAR has been looking to transition part of its racing series from large superspeedways to half-mile oval tracks like the ones at Bristol, Tenn., Martinsville, Va., and North Wilkesboro, N.C. The resized Fontana facility is part of that transition.

“Our goal is really to be in Southern California long term,” Kennedy said. “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 looking at other opportunities in Southern California, Kennedy said, with reports last spring saying the possibilities of a street race in San Diego were being explored.

The headwinds appear to be pushing the other way, however. It was recently announced that the Irwindale Speedway, home to a variety of lower-tier NASCAR racing series for a quarter-century, will host its final race on Dec. 21.

IDS Real Estate, which bought the site in 2022, plans to bulldoze the track and build an industrial park in its place.

Sports

Damien basketball team opens 24-0 lead, then holds off Etiwanda

Published

21 minutes ago

January 9, 2026

Press Room

Damien basketball team opens 24-0 lead, then holds off Etiwanda

Junior guard Zaire Rasshan of Damien knows football. His father, Osaar, was a backup quarterback at UCLA from 2005-09. Rasshan played quarterback his freshman season at Damien until deciding basketball was his No. 1 sport.

So when Rasshan looked up at the scoreboard Thursday night at Etiwanda in the first quarter and saw the Spartans had scored the first 24 points, he had to think football.

“That was crazy,” he said. “That’s three touchdowns and a field goal.”

Damien (17-4, 2-0) was able to hold off Etiwanda 56-43 to pick up a key Baseline League road victory. Winning at Etiwanda has been a rarity for many teams through the years. But Damien’s fast start couldn’t have been any better. The Spartans didn’t miss any shots while playing good defense for their 24-0 surge. Etiwanda’s first basket didn’t come until the 1:38 mark of the first quarter.

“When we play together, we can beat anyone,” Rasshan said.

Rasshan was a big part of the victory, contributing 23 points. Eli Garner had 14 points and 11 rebounds.

Etiwanda came in 18-1 and 1-0 in league. The Eagles missed 13 free throws, which prevented any comeback. The closest they got in the second half was within 11 points.

Damien’s victory puts it squarely in contention for a Southern Section Open Division playoff spot. The Spartans lost in the final seconds to Redondo Union in the Classic at Damien, showing they can compete with the big boys in coach Mike LeDuc’s 52nd season of coaching.

Rasshan is averaging nearly 20 points a game. He made three threes. And he hasn’t forgotten how to make a long pass, whether it’s with a football or basketball.

Sports

Ole Miss staffer references Aaron Hernandez while discussing ‘chaotic’ coaching complications with LSU

Published

12 hours ago

January 8, 2026

Press Room

Ole Miss staffer references Aaron Hernandez while discussing ‘chaotic’ coaching complications with LSU

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The chaos between LSU coaches who left Ole Miss alongside Lane Kiffin but are still coaching the Rebels in the College Football Playoff is certainly a whirlwind.

Joe Judge, Ole Miss’ quarterbacks coach, has found himself in the thick of the drama — while he is not headed for Baton Rouge, he’s had to wonder who he will be working with on a weekly basis.

When asked this week about what it’s like to go through all the trials and tribulations, Judge turned heads with his answer that evoked his New England Patriots days.

Aaron Hernandez sits in the courtroom of the Attleboro District Court during his hearing. Former New England Patriot Aaron Hernandez has been indicted on a first-degree murder charge in the death of Odin Lloyd in North Attleboro, Massachusetts, on Aug. 22, 2013. (Jared Wickerham/Getty Images)

“My next-door neighbor was Aaron Hernandez,” Judge said, according to CBS Sports. “I know this is still more chaotic.”

Hernandez was found guilty of the 2013 murder of Odin Lloyd, which occurred just three years into his NFL career.

“If you watch those documentaries, my house is on the TV next door,” Judge added. “The detectives knocked on my door to find out where he was. I didn’t know. We just kind of talked to the organization. But it was obviously chaotic.”

Aaron Hernandez was convicted of the 2013 murder of semipro football player Odin Lloyd. (REUTERS/Brian Snyder)

FROM MR IRRELEVANT TO GENERATIONAL WEALTH, BROCK PURDY WANTS TO USE HIS LIFESTYLE FOR GOOD

Judge, though, was able to compare the two situations to see how players can combat wild distractions.

“Those players that year handled that extremely well. Came out of that chaos, and we had some really good direction inside with some veterans and some different guys. You have something like that happen — how do you handle something like that? How do you deal with something like that? So you keep the focus on what you can handle, what you can control, which at that time was football for us, and we went through the stretch, and we were able to have success that year,” Judge said.

Judge also compared this scenario to the 2020 NFL season when he was head coach of the New York Giants, saying he would have “no idea” who would be available due to surprise positive COVID-19 tests.

Head coach Joe Judge of the New York Giants looks on during the second quarter against the Dallas Cowboys at MetLife Stadium. The game took place in East Rutherford, New Jersey, on Dec. 19, 2021. (Sarah Stier/Getty Images)

The Rebels face Miami in the Fiesta Bowl, the College Football Playoff Semifinal, on Thursday night.

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Sports

Prep talk: Calabasas basketball team is surging with 11 wins in last 12 games

Published

12 hours ago

January 8, 2026

Press Room

Prep talk: Calabasas basketball team is surging with 11 wins in last 12 games

Calabasas pulled off a huge win in high school basketball on Tuesday night, handing Thousand Oaks its first defeat after 16 victories in a Marmonte League opener.

The Coyotes (13-5) have quietly turned around their season after a 2-4 start, winning 11 of their last 12 games.

One of the major contributors has been 6-foot-3 junior guard Johnny Thyfault, who’s averaging 16 points and has become a fan favorite because of his dunking skills. He also leads the team in taking charging fouls.

He transferred to Calabasas after his freshman year at Viewpoint.

As for beating Thousand Oaks, coach Jon Palarz said, “We got to play them at home and had great effort.”

This is a daily look at the positive happenings in high school sports. To submit any news, please email eric.sondheimer@latimes.com.