CHARLOTTE, N.C. — NASCAR will hold a street race on Naval Base Coronado in Southern California next June as a replacement for the Cup Series event held in downtown Chicago for three years.
The move to the San Diego area does not eliminate a return for the top-tier Cup Series to Chicago, where NASCAR will still maintain an office and effort an eventual return, perhaps as early as 2027. Shane Van Gisbergen won the inaugural Chicago street race in 2023 as well as the third edition earlier this month — both times in a Trackhouse Racing Chevrolet — while Alex Bowman won the 2024 event.
The shift next year will allow NASCAR to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Navy by hosting all three of its national series over a three-day weekend on June 19-21. The Cup Series will take the track for the main event after races for the third-tier Truck Series and the second-tier Xfinity Series.
“As part of our nation’s 250th anniversary, we are honored for NASCAR to join the celebration as we host our first street race at a military base, Naval Base Coronado,” Ben Kennedy, executive vice president and chief venue and racing innovations officer for NASCAR, said Wednesday via a news release. “NASCAR San Diego Weekend will honor the Navy’s history and the men and women who serve as we take the best motorsports in the world to the streets of Naval Base Coronado.”
It will be the second exclusively street venue in NASCAR history — Chicago was the first — and first on an active military base. The course layout is not set, but it is expected to be close to three miles.
While NASCAR maintains a presence in the Golden State at Sonoma Raceway — this year’s Cup Series race there was held July 13 — that track is in Northern California. The circuit hasn’t visited SoCal for a regular-season race since the closure of Auto Club Speedway after the 2023 race at the track in Fontana, and while the preseason Clash exhibition was held on a temporary short track inside the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum from 2022 through 2024, that event was held this year at Bowman Gray Stadium in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
Kennedy, who has been bullish on new endeavors for his family business, was the brains of the races at the Coliseum, in Chicago and at Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez in Mexico City earlier this summer, and he also gets the credit for next year’s street showcase in San Diego, a venture the Navy is excited about.
“NASCAR embodies the very best of the American spirit through speed, precision and an unyielding pursuit of excellence,” Navy Secretary John C. Phelan said in a release. “Hosting a race aboard Naval Air Station North Island, the birthplace of naval aviation, it’s not just a historic first, it’s a powerful tribute to the values we share: grit, teamwork and love of country.
“From the flight deck to the finish line, this collaboration reflects the operational intensity and unity of purpose that define both the United States Navy and NASCAR.”
The base is known as the “West Coast Quarterdeck” and is a consortium of nine Navy installations that stretch from San Clemente Island 50 miles off the coast of Long Beach to the Mountain Warfare Training Facility 50 miles east of San Diego.
NASCAR named Amy Lupo, who has been with the stock-car sanctioning body since 2021 and helped launch the Coliseum’s hosting of the Clash, as president of the race. She spent more than 20 years at ESPN, a tenure that included helping the X Games when she lived in San Diego early in her career. She still lives in Southern California.
Pacer will set the pace
INDIANAPOLIS — Brickyard 400 fans are about to get their own version of a “Pacers and Racers” weekend.
Organizers of the Cup Series race said Tuesday that three-time NBA All-Star selection Pascal Siakam, a forward for the Indiana Pacers, has been selected to drive the pace car for Sunday’s Cup Series race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
The announcement came two months after the Pacers played the New York Knicks in an Eastern Conference title series matchup on the same day as the Indianapolis 500. The events at IMS and Gainbridge Fieldhouse took place just a short drive apart.
It was just the fourth time a Pacers and racers doubleheader had taken place in Indy.
Now, though, Siakam will get a chance to experience the other part, this time leading the Cup Series cars to the green flag in a 2025 Chevrolet Blazer EV SS. The race will take place on the historic 2.5-mile oval for the second straight year after it had been run on the track’s road course from 2021-24 as the Verizon 200 at the Brickyard while part of a busy weekend that included the open-wheel IndyCar Series also racing there. The Cup Series first raced on the oval at IMS from 1994 to 2020 before NASCAR decided to change things up.
“Basketball and motorsports — Pacers and racers — go hand in hand in Indianapolis,” Doug Boles, the president of IndyCar and the speedway, said in a release. “Following the Pacers’ electrifying postseason run, it’s only fitting to have Pascal join us to pace the field as NASCAR’s biggest stars compete to win the In-Season Challenge and add their name to the history books with a win at the Brickyard.”
Siakam, who grew up in Cameroon, didn’t start playing basketball until he was 17 years old. A two-time All-NBA selection, he helped the Toronto Raptors win the league championship in 2019 and helped the Pacers reach this year’s NBA Finals against the Oklahoma City Thunder, who won the title after Indiana took the best-of-seven series the distance.
