Ever since NASCAR ran the second race of the season at Auto Club Speedway with the announcement that this would be the last race at the 2.0-mile superspeedway, news on the track has stalled completely. NASCAR had previously said they planned to convert the track to a 0.5-mile short track, but, no announcement has been made on that progress either since the big track was closed.
Some wishful thinkers hoped that the lack of news meant that NASCAR was reconsidering getting rid of the track, but, the 2024 schedule came with no mention of Auto Club Speedway. However, some Internet sleuths have noted some activity at the track, but, it may not be the activity some hoped for.
There has not been any official announcement on what is going on at Auto Club Speedway, but HubbaDuck97 drove past the facility and noticed two signs posted outside of the facility. One said, “NASCAR/New Valley Construction Entrance” and the other said “Hillwood Construction Entrance Only”.
No other context was given, and no other images were shown regarding what specifically was being done at the track. It is also unclear exactly how long those signs have been posted.
Another update was posted by Jeff Gluck later in Tuesday when he posted construction getting started at Auto Club Speedway. For now, they were just taking care of parking lots with the picture by Will Lester. Long story short, construction has started, and it is happening.
Aside from that there is not much else that has been officially announced by NASCAR. They never even announced when they reportedly sold the land at and surrounding Auto Club Speedway originally. However, the original Adam Stern report did state that roughly 90 acres would be left over for NASCAR to construct a short track on the site.
From there, we know very little else, but we can begin to speculate about what all of this means. There was also some speculation on Twitter about whether or not there could be some changes to how the track could be laid out on the property. Nascarman on Twitter put together his theory based on the property map.
It’s worth noting that we could not verify this is exactly how the land was divvied up when it comes to the sale. Then again, if this is true, it does not change that much about the original plan as it would still be a Martinsville-shaped short track, but it would just be in a different location on the property than originally thought.
As far as when Auto Club Speedway may be able to return to the schedule, if at all, it’s going to be a while. Now that construction has started, it gives the track some hope that it can return sooner rather than later, albeit in the short track form.
The silence of NASCAR is interesting as well. The Auto Club Speedway Twitter account still exists under the handle @NextGenCA, and it is active. It has been used to primarily retweet NASCAR promotional tweets, but it’s still there.
It’s obvious that NASCAR has not forgotten about it, and the fact that construction is happening with no NASCAR announcement can mean one of two things. First off, it could mean that nothing has changed about the plans, and this is just the normal timeline NASCAR claimed. The silence could also mean that NASCAR has given up on any plans at the site, but that seems unlikely given both the signs and the construction actually starting.
California race fans will be watching what happens at this location as construction continues. As of right now, NASCAR has remained silent, and we will have to wait. Maybe when the 2025 schedule comes out, we will know more about the true future of Auto Club Speedway.
