Thursday during the media conference announcing the 2025 national series schedules, Ben Kennedy was asked about NASCAR’s presence in southern California.
Auto Club Speedway has been closed since the 2023 race and definitive plans on a renovation have not been announced. Most recently they have been rumors that NASCAR is looking at a possible street course in San Diego.
Q. Earlier in the year Steve Phelps said you guys would be in southern California in 2025. Can you tell us what happened with that? Is Fontana still a possibility for ’26?
BEN KENNEDY: So our goal is really to be in southern California long-term. 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, what are kind of the other activities that could happen on that parcel of land that we have there, but also exploring all of our opportunities the southern California market.
It’s a massive market for us, number two in terms of the quantity of NASCAR fans, a huge media market for us, in FOX’s backyard. Strategically as a sport it makes a lot of sense for us to be in southern California.
What that looks like in the future remains to be seen. Unfortunately we weren’t able to have it on the 2025 schedule, but bullish about getting it back on the schedule here in the future.
