New Speedway Has Fans All Fired Up

The first race at Roger Penske’s California Speedway in Fontana is nearly eight months away, but already all 71 of the corporate suites on pit row have been sold and 21,000 ticket applications have been received.

And tickets haven’t even gone on sale. In fact, specific ticket prices haven’t been announced, although Penske said Thursday that the average price for a Winston Cup stock car or Indy car race ticket would be $73, with a range between $50 and $120.

The first race on the $100-million track, built on the former Kaiser steel mill property, will be a NASCAR Winston Cup race on June 22. Also scheduled is a CART Indy car race Sept. 28. Negotiations are under way for a NASCAR Craftsman Truck race in mid-October.

“The entire project is 50% completed,” Penske said while conducting a media-VIP tour of the 475-acre site. “We expect to have cars on the track in December to test the surface and team testing for the first race will start in the spring. When the project is completed, we’ll have the premier stadium in California, and that includes all sports.”

For the inaugural race, the seating capacity will be about 70,000, with eventual plans for 107,000. There will also be a 1.3-mile infield road course.

“From a corporate standpoint, we have exceeded our expectations,” Penske said. “We have shut off our corporate sales for hospitality suites. Our next goal is to sell 12,000 permanent seat licenses. I envision the day 10 years down the road when we have stands two-thirds of the way around the track, with seating for perhaps as many as 200,000.”

The PSLs, priced at $1,200 each, are good for 25 years and enable purchasers exclusive rights to use of a stadium-type seat overlooking the start-finish line of the two-mile tri-oval track. Also included is VIP parking for all events and charter membership in the California Speedway Club.

“We believe the PSL fairly allocates our best seats and at the same time provides our customers with added value through membership in the club,” said Richard J. Peters, president of Penske Motorsports Inc.

The PSLs will go on sale this month. Season tickets, which guarantee the same seat for the Winston Cup and Indy car races, will be available around Jan. 1, with individual seats going on sale March 1.

Where only a few months ago there were acres of rubbish and debris left when the steel mill closed in 1983, the ground surrounding the track has been cleaned and leveled, ready to be paved for 32,000 parking spots.

To get rid of most of the junk, crews dug a hole a quarter of a mile long, 200 yards wide and 40 feet deep and what was left of the mill debris was pushed into the hole. The dirt from the ditch was used to build berms for the 14-degree banking on the turns.

Before construction could start, Kaiser Ventures Inc., the property owners, had to purge the land of any toxic waste left from the mill operations. Last week, Richard E. Stoddard, Kaiser’s chairman and chief executive officer, received a Governor’s Award for environmental and economic leadership for the company’s work in cleaning up the site.

Kaiser contributed the land to Penske for 11% interest in Penske Motorsports, which includes the Michigan Speedway and Nazareth Speedway in Pennsylvania.

The only landmark left from Kaiser is a water tower, 136 feet high, in the center of the track’s infield. Besides being used as a scoreboard, it holds 250,000 gallons of water for landscaping use.

Although not on the Penske property, tall smokestacks of the California Steel Industries, which remains in operation immediately south of the track, provide a link to the past.