Not in my house 🗿

The track that was loathed for 15 years, had a gigantic amount of indifference towards it for 7 and had people fawning over it for 5 years.

@@brianmurray7980 5 years? Its been the most consistently good track for over a decade...

@@jacobevenson8702 2012-2017 were very hit or miss. 2018-present has been more hit than miss.

it also killed Greg Moore

It would need a repave and I don’t know if it would still race good. But anyways still sad

The racing there sucked and was boring as f. Fans asked for another short track and are crying as usual that they are getting what they asked for. SMH.

@@richardglena2817 they better hope it races good or the NASCAR fans are gonna go full scorched earth

​@@Johnny-es1wl NASCAR fans really can't make up their minds. Once we are presented with something good, we want to keep it. Then there's Texas, which is a topic for another day.

@@Johnny-es1wl I never asked for it. I wanted a repave and a different HP Package. That's all that was needed. Look at Fontana's sister track in Michigan. The races there were bleh because of the HP Package. The surface was in better condition than Fontana's was.

I know 😭

There might be rain this weekend so we will just have to wait an see.

They should have made texas to a short track tbh

@@peegeeare yep. They could build a short track and a road course there after getting rid of the waste of a track that's currently sitting there. That race is crap for both NASCAR and Indy.

Same here

I am thrilled about the rain, we're probably gonna get a night race Xfinity race on Sunday night. Fitting way for the track to go out.

Same here man, got tickets from my mom and step-dad for Christmas, and the 3 of us plus my friend are going in a few days

Let’s hope it doesn’t get rained out!

Yup. A bidding farewell to the bastion of West Coast racing. I got a feeling the reconfig will bomb harder than Texas

I remember those days

I feel the 2013 race was where it all changed. Every race since has been excellent there.

Kentucky is being used as a parking lot for Ford , a lot of brand new tricks sit in the parking lot waiting in parts , crazy .

Yeah, and now it's gonna be Texas and Kentucky's "hate" child once Martinsville takes over the reconfig

Congratulations on hanging on to a state that so many are running from. You're a pillar.

You mean the only version of California Speedway. I'm calling the reconfig Martinsville 2.0

It will always be California Speedway, simply because the state will never change (unfortunately), unlike sponsors with naming rights that come and go so often anymore that most can't recall the history of names for their local sports venues.

@@justlucky8254 The 2 mile config will be forever remembered as "California Speedway". No sponsorship bullshit-- save that for the short track...

I agree. It's gonna become the Texas of short tracks. If it does, it'll bite NASCAR so hard that they'll beg to buy some land to restore the speedway

Yea, I hate short tracks and don't even watch them. If I want to see a car traveling at 80 mph, I go on the freeway. If I want to see a car go (almost) 200 mph, I got to Auto Club.

Meanwhile, the short track will be all but forgotten by 2025 with the horrible Martinsville cloning they're doing to it

I completely agree with you. I live about 9 miles from the speedway. Nothing will ever to compare to the CART glory days. The sounds those cars made were absolutely mind astonishing. I just wish I would’ve gone more times. So sad to see the 2mile oval go 😔

I've only seen this in 2013: Kyle Busch 2014: Kyle Busch 2019 Kyle Busch 2020: Alex Bowmen 2023: Kyle Busch

The reconfiguration will suck, and it'll become the Texas of short tracks

Just look at how bad Richmond is right now. total SNOOZER, NASCAR really needs to open the taps back on these engines and be done with this low HP crap

Wow.

Wow

Wow I would never have guessed.

Truck Series Legend

I can't beleive they've kept him around in recent years. His time passed more than a few years ago.

😭good bye nostalgia California

I'm glad it's going to change. Other than last year the last few years there haven't been good. Very mediocre.

goat?

Im glad im going to its final show

@@callmen4 they should’ve made Texas a short track texas is 💩

Like Michigan is any better though. The repave there ruined the track too.

Short track this gen is great if it's at Bristol. Martinsville, not so much. And Auto Club is turning into the latter

That's why I'm not watching it or going there ever again after this weekend

@@S.K.R.E.Inc. Same here, I despise short tracks. If i wanted to see cars drive at 80 mph, I'd pull over on the freeway.

241.428 mph. This still is the fastest lap ever driven on a closed circuit. After more than 22 years, nobody ever dared to drive faster on any race or test track anywhere in the world.

It will. Meanwhile the short track era is gonna start and end with a crash

This short track is gonna be absolutely failure/flop harder than the hype of Kentucky 🤣.

Why would we look forward to another short track that they have all over the country? Makes 0 sense. Smh.

@@48waffles36 Kentucky wasn't a Short Track, it was a product of its time, an intermediate track. That type of track (where they were trying to build tracks suitable for both Indycar and NASCAR) was a failure just like the multi purpose stadiums that were built to accommodate both NFL and MLB games. The type of short track I have in mind are like either Martinsville or Bristol, tracks half a mile in length (as opposed to 1.5 miles for Intermediate tracks) that encourage either side by side racing or close quarters racing that leads to tempers flaring (the Clash nowadays, for now at least takes place on a temporary short track at the LA Coliseum, and the racing was similar to that on Martinsville in my view).

@@wizzjo1nt5 because NASCAR is correcting a mistake that dates back to the 1990's. So many tracks (that ended up making up the most on the calendar) added in that time were intermediate tracks, and often had the same size and shape as tracks that already existed, it was inevitable that the term "cookie cutter track" was coined with so many. Kyle Petty at that time expressed concerns shared by many at the time "racing on the track is changing, but I don't think boring is for the better," intermediate tracks were so wide and fast that it didn't promote close racing, what's more, as shown by the derogatory term "cookie cutter track" when they're the same size and shape as other tracks, it makes it harder to tell which is which, they lack character in other words. Short tracks like Martinsville and Bristol have character and great racing to boot. Bristol has its high banks, Martinsville has its quarter mile straights and tight, low banked corners

@@SiVlog1989 You didn't make it make sense at all or better in any way. Save your time. It's stupid and nothing is changing that.

At best: Fox Martinsville racing At worst: Texas

Two completely different situations. Ontario couldn't pack the place because they only had two events a year if that, and no ancillary events outside of random concerts. California Speedway was built to recover the land from its Superfund site designation and was a huge tax credit to Roger Penske for taking the land and building a speedway in exchange, making the land around the speedway usable.

Also Riverside

Fontana was a mix of Ontario and Riverside, both tracks that shut down for suburbia to gentrify the population into ghettos. The same is happening to Auto Club

There's still a chance a 2 miler can open up in the area, if the luxury gentrifiers don't beat them to it first. The speedway was built on top of a warehouse, after all

@@S.K.R.E.Inc. : Actually, it was built on the remains of a Kaiser Steel Mill!

Same here, only 2010. Been loving the sport since my first race i saw 13 years ago.

Same. After this, there is no home track that SoCal can claim, the nearest ones are Sonoma, Las Vegas, and Phoenix

ALMS also raced there, but i can't remember the last time a major event used it though.

Yep or Michigan and Texas since the repaves at both tracks ruined the track. Pfft

@@runrafarunthebestintheworld Michigan got screwed up by the traction compound. Give it a few more years and it should be fine. But yeah, Texas's redesign needs to be blown off the map.

Speedway Motorsports keeps blackmailing NASCAR to keep Texas or else no Charlotte, pulling out of the North Wilkesboro revival, and reconfiguring Atlanta. I have been fine if they reconfigured Phoenix, cause that track's a snoozer

@@Carshtime Pride. They were happy when they stole NW's race dates and now don't want to let it go. We are luck that NW is the all star race this year.

Only part of the main straightaway will remain.

Demolished, NASCAR wants to sell the land, likely to an "affordable housing" apartment complex so they can complain every race day.

That's what I was thinking. It could have rivaled Charlotte in configurations used for races. Also, the track is from 1997

If this goes out with a banger race the drivers and fans should send a petition to just repave the 2 mile configuration and see what happens. There's still debate about it. Making it miss the 2024 schedule. I will miss it regardless.

@@tomasmowery164 if it's just repaved, it goes back to how bad it was when it opened.

@@nicolesgaming8917 Funny, that didn't happen to Darlington now did it?

Different climate. A more humid climate is conducive for wearing a repaved surface in.

The main reason for its reconfiguration is the pesky real estate market in SoCal. The land The track is on and they wanna rip it up to they can have the land and build something arguably useless

Me too man. I’ve been coming here since I was 4.

Ikr

Everyone who says that California's racing was "boring" never watched more than 10 laps and never saw it in-person.

The track is just 2 miles from the former site of the Ontario Motor Speedway, which had already gotten shut down because of rising land values 15 years before California Speedway was even built. It's surprises me that it has survived 25 years.

That and SMI owns Texas not NASCAR.

@stephenholloway6893 I was saying that SMI and Nascar are pretty much the same. And that they wanted to sell some of the land to developers instead of keeping a great track the length it was built for. Fontana wasn't built to be a short track. It was built to replace Ontario Motor Speedway and be a copy of Michigan International Speedway. I know that SMI and Nascar are technically separate, but practically do business together due to the sanctioning body and track ownership.

That's cause Speedway Motorsports owns it, and will force NASCAR to keep racing there for eternity if they don't want to see North Wilkesboro pulled again. If only NASCAR bought that firm...

I Hope this doesn't effect the brighter future of NASCAR.

Arguably one of the best races in NASCAR history. And I was there!

Weak is too generous. It'll be almost empty for years

I’ve been 3x it’ll be my fourth this weekend great racing! I’m gonna miss it dearly