Naval Base Coronado (Coronado, Calif.) — NASCAR, in some ways, bit off a task that was almost too big to chew.
Funnel 50,000 people on an island that has only one road from the less-populated south and one bridge from the major metropolitan area of San Diego. Get all those people, and food vendors and merchandise vendors onto a U.S. naval base. And, oh, by the way, build a racetrack that’s 3.4 miles where they must put up all the barriers and fencing on a course that used local roads as well as military tarmac.
So all things considered, NASCAR pulled off a good one at Naval Base Coronado this past weekend. Team presidents gushed over the experience for their sponsors. The run-of-the-mill fans? They certainly had their complaints about food and ingress (some of those corrected by Sunday).
It’s not every day a race winner gets to celebrate in a military vehicle. (Photo by Sean Gardner/Getty Images)
NASCAR had to repair walls after crashes in each of the three main events, which possibly were too long as far as the estimated race lengths were way short of reality.
But NASCAR team owner Denny Hamlin, who also competes in the No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing car, viewed the event as a successful one, and that’s not just because his 23XI Racing organization won the race with Corey Heim taking the checkered flag.
“The event itself was fantastic,” Hamlin said in his postrace news conference. “‘m sure NASCAR and its team has got a checklist of things they can improve on. … There’s many races that makes selling [sponsorship] on a car really difficult.
“This was not one of them.”
NASCAR Chief Operating Officer Ben Kennedy wouldn’t commit to keeping the event for next year, citing the impact of conducting an event on an active navy base. The event disrupts military operations.
But this obviously was done with full support of the Navy. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth waved the green flag to start the race.
“We feel this is a tremendously successful event,” Kennedy said in a postrace news conference. “We want to be respectful that this is an active military base at the same time.
“This is a great partnership. … We would love to return.”
Corey Heim celebrates his Cup win with U.S. Navy service members. (Photo by Chris Graythen/Getty Images)
Should NASCAR return? Kennedy said that event ticket-buyers were 67 percent first-time race attendees. He said the ticket purchasers were 11 percent more female than the typical NASCAR race and that the Hispanic purchasers were three times more than a NASCAR event.
He also said it attracted fans from all 50 states and 17 countries.
The question will be twofold — the investment NASCAR makes in the event. Two contracts NASCAR had with the Navy indicated NASCAR wasn’t paying a lease for the property but was responsible for the costs of conducting the event.
NASCAR did pay a fee (redacted in contracts) for the right to sell concessions and merchandise but the Navy was in charge of all alcohol sales.
The other question would be whether this fills all the roles of a typical street race, which is designed to bring NASCAR to people who wouldn’t normally see it. Here, fans still had to come with limited public transportation options.
But what it certainly did was fill in the Southern California market as NASCAR has sold off nearly all of its property in Fontana, where it has kept only the frontstretch of a former 2-mile oval with possibly still some faint hope to create a half-mile short track.
Cars pass by the USS Carl Vinson during Sunday’s race at Naval Base Coronado. (Photo by Tony Ding/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
Whether NASCAR returns to Chicago for a street race next year is still to be determined as its three years in the city took at least a one-year hiatus for 2026.
One of the biggest differences at Coronado was the course itself, and NASCAR had to stop each of the races it had in order to repair walls or fencing that buckled after hard crashes.
“Unfortunately, we did have some wall repairs that we had to go through,” Kennedy said. “What I would say on the flipside of that is the walls held up. They did what they needed to do. Anytime you saw a vehicle go into the wall, push back a bit, which we were expecting and hoping for.
“All I can say on that front is we have a team that is always working on making sure that we are operationally ready for moments like that. We had some learnings yesterday. We applied them [Sunday]. I would say going forward we’re going to make sure we reduce the amount of time to repair those walls as much as we can.”
Drivers seemed accepting of that, that they would rather the walls have some give.
“It’s our job not to hit it, you know?” said veteran racer A.J. Allmendinger to me and other reporters the day before the race. “I think what happens after the wall is not that big of a concern — it’s just because you know you’re hitting it a ton anyway. … The best way I can not make the wall move is not hit it.”
NASCAR also had to stop the race to re-weld what appeared to be a sewer vent cover during the O’Reilly Series race. The cover damaged the car of Corey Day, and NASCAR allowed Day to replace the radiator and get his laps back, something it typically wouldn’t do but opted to do under its “except in rare instances” policy.
Lance Corporal “Bruno” relaxes during Sunday’s Anduril 250. (Photo by Larry Placido/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
The Cup drivers, as would be expected, seemed to have the fewest issues navigating the course after the truck series and O’Reilly Series, typically with younger and less experienced drivers, saw more than their fair share of wrecks.
While Shane van Gisbergen didn’t have the race he wanted on Sunday, he said a day before the event that it was a difficult and fun track.
“There’s so much compromise — each section of corners seems to have two or three [turns relying on momentum],” van Gisbergen said in a news conference after winning the pole. “Very rarely that there’s one corner just on its own. They all lead into one another, so there’s a lot of compromise to try and set yourself up for that section.
“There was no one out there who did a perfect lap.”
That could sum up the event for NASCAR, too. Not perfect. Lots of compromise. And yet fun.
Love, Buescher Sign Cup Series Deals
Jesse Love signed to replace Josh Berry in the Wood Brothers No. 21 Cup car next year, while Chris Buescher signed a contract extension to remain at RFK Racing.
RFK co-owner Brad Keselowski said it wasn’t a layup to keep Buescher, who had attracted interest from many other teams.
Jesse Love is making the full-time move to the Cup Series in 2027. (Photo by James Gilbert/Getty Images)
Buescher said it came down to Jack Roush more than a decade ago giving him a chance and the progress he sees in the RFK program.
“Some of it is history and having that appreciation and feeling like you have a home and the other part of it is truly feeling like the competition level is right there at the cusp of truly being great,” Buescher told me and other reporters.
In The News
–Christopher Bell exited his car after the first caution at Naval Base Coronado to mitigate any potential damage to his broken left wrist and his inability to grip the wheel possibly as well as he would have liked. Brent Crews got in Bell’s car, but a transmission issue ended his run early in the event. Whether Bell runs the full race next weekend at Sonoma Raceway, the final road course of the season, remains to be seen.
–INDYCAR disqualified Indy NXT Road America Race 2 winner Alessandro de Tullio after realizing that Foyt Racing cars of de Tullio and Nicholas Montiero had put on each other’s qualifying tires for the race. Drivers must use their qualifying set to start one of the two races, and neither did since they swapped tires (assuming accidentally). INDYCAR awarded the win to original second-place finisher Matteo Nannini.
— Ford, with support from NASCAR, will stage an exhibition race with 12 of its drivers in Ford cars (not Cup cars but rather IMSA-type cars) on Veteran’s Day. The 12 drivers will represent the six branches of the military. The venue is TBA as well as any plans for television/streaming. It will benefit a variety of Ford initiatives for military families.
–A recent St. Petersburg City Council agenda indicated the tentative date of INDYCAR’s St. Petersburg Grand Prix as March 5-7, 2017.
RIP Steve Waid
Steve Waid, who served as editor for Grand National Scene for decades and is one of the most well-known journalists over the last 50 years, died last week at age 77. The NASCAR Hall of Fame presented Waid with the Squier-Hall Award for NASCAR Media Excellence in 2018.
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They Said It
“I’m speechless.” — Corey Heim after winning in San Diego for his first career NASCAR Cup Series victory.
WHAT YOU SHOULD READ NEXT
Corey Heim’s first Cup victory was a historic one, as NASCAR ran its inaugural race at Naval Base Coronado.
