Know Your Track: Fontana

Auto Club Speedway

Track Name: Auto Club Speedway

           

Nicknames: Fontana

Location: Fontana, California

Capacity: 68,000

Date of First Race: June 22, 1997

Layout: Fontana is a 2 mile asphalt "D-shaped" oval, meaning the track has a curved front straightaway and a straight back stretch. The four turns of the track are banked at 14 degrees. The front stretch is also very wide and it is not uncommon to see four or five cars running side-by-side down the front stretch.

Current Sprint Cup Races: 

• March 22, 2015 - Auto Club 400, a 400 hundred mile, 200 lap regular season points race. This is a Sunday afternoon event.

Most Wins:    

• All-Time: Jimmie Johnson, 5 wins
• Active: Jimmie Johnson, 5 wins
• Latest Winner: 
• 2014 Auto Club 400: Kyle Busch

Description: Auto Club Speedway has become a track that has provided outstanding racing in the last five years or so, producing insane three-wide racing in the turns and creating last lap wins. Just check out Kevin Harvick's win in 2011 for reference:

The racing here is finally living up to the hype the track had back in the mid-2000's. Back then, the track went from one race a year up to two, including replacing Darlington Speedway for the Labor Day weekend race, a move which pissed off many of NASCAR's old die-hards. NASCAR was hoping to use Fontana to tap into the Los Angeles area as a source of fanship, but it never quite caught on. In an attempt to salvage the two races it had, Fontana's second race was moved into the Chase, but that didn't help either. What did help was giving up one of it's dates and shortening it's remaining race from 500 to 400 miles. And the racing there has never been better than it is today.

Fun Facts: The track, due to it's proximity to Los Angeles (about 40 miles), is often used for movie scene locations. Films that use Auto Club Speedway include Charlie's Angels, The Bucket List, and Herbie: Fully Loaded. It is also used as inspiration for one of the tracks in the Pixar movie Cars.