Hello again Nascar fans. Sorry for the delay I had a dental appointment yesterday so I could get my teeth pulled and apparantly I was way way out there on medication. All I know is the kids had a great laugh at my expense as I stumbled around trying to get to the bathroom. So glad that I’m not to the age where they have to care for me yet, thank god. haha. Anyway now let ‘s look at the Fontana Speedway.
The Fontana Speedway was built in 1995 and opened the doors to race fans everywhere in 1997. The Speedway is located on the former site of the first steel mill located west of the Rocky Mountains, The Kaiser Mill. The track itself is a unique mix of features from Michigan Speedway with some aspects of Pocono thrown in. In February of last year the company inked a deal worth some 50-75 million dollars for ten years to rename the speedway The Auto Club Speedway of Southern California. The track is actually located some 45 miles from Los Angeles and boasts a history in the film industry as well with movies like Herbie:Fully Loaded, Charlie’s Angels, and more recently the Jack Nicholson-Morgan Freeman vehicle, The Bucket List.
The track itself is a 2 mile long D shaped oval. It is 75 foot wide and has a 15 foot apron. The degrees of banking as with many tracks varies. The turns have a 14 degree banking while the frontstretch has 11 degrees of banking on its 3100 feet. The backstraightaway is 25oo feet long and has a 3 degree banking the length of the backstraightaway. The track boasts several tracks in one. There is an interior test circuit is 1.45 miles and has some 13 turns. The Auto competition course has 21 turns and is a 2.8 mile track. The motorcycle competition course is slightly smaller at 2.36 miles and also has 21 turns.
The garage area has the capacity to hold 100 cars and pit road is 2200 feet long with some 44 spaces for cars along pit road. The total land covered by the speedway and it’s surrounding structures is 568 acres. The speedway interior is some 130.7 acres and the landscaping covers some 136 acres. The grandstand upper level holds some 36,300 seats and the lower grandstand holds some 42,490 seats. The Speedway club also holds an additional 12,530 seats. The total grandstand seating is 92,100 seats. There are also 28 skyboxes for viewing the race as well.
Another fun fact about the speedway is that the number of concrete blocks used to make the buildings is in excess of 230,000! That’s alot of concrete blocks! The amount of concrete used to construct the grandstand foundations, was enough concrete to cover 10 football fields at 1 foot thick. Now that is a lot of concrete. Seating consists of 280,000 pounds of aluminum to create those seats. There was also 300,000 tons of asphalt was used to pave the entire place. There are also 17 miles of underground piping for utilities at the track.
The Sprint cup drivers will be visiting the track this weekend and then again in October which means that they run twice a year at Fontana. Right now they have dropped ticket prices for Fontana to $35.oo in an attempt to get more fans to the track. I would go but that’s just to far for me! Plus I have school on Tuesday so there will be no Fontana racing this year, haha. Well I hope that strategy pays off for them. It certainly seemed to work at Daytona, I am telling you I think that there were more people there than ever before because of that.
Well thats about all for now friends. I need to take some more medication for my teeth and get to bed, I have to work tomorrow. Well take care and until Sunday, keep on racing. See you then Nascar fans.
Nascar Dude says
wow i hope you are feeling better. you show some real dedication for writing about the race while you are in pain. feel better thanks for keeping us updated
Lorri says
i wasnt really in any pain so to speak. a little discomfort but i lost about 14 hours that i cant recall anything that happened thank god. it worked out just like i planned it!!! no recall is definitely better than total recall. but i sure felt really still pretty loopy on thursday. i got up and went to class too. talk about your dedication, i love school and we got points for a timed writing on thursday, i couldnt pass up extra credit so i got up and went to school still feeling pretty much out of it. hah. im better now though. haha thanks for asking.