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NASCAR taking street race to San Diego naval base in 2026

The new NASCAR street race weekend at Naval Base Coronado in San Diego next year serves multiple purposes.

NASCAR still prioritizes the Southern California market following the departures of Auto Club Speedway and the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum from the Cup Series schedule. It still values having a temporary rotating event that can be taken to the people in downtown settings.

The sport also has longstanding initiatives tied to military support and running three national touring races on a military base to support the 250th birthday of the United States of America.

This is also all on-brand for Ben Kennedy in his role as ‘Senior Vice President, Racing Development & Strategy’ for the sanctioning body founded by his great-grandfather Bill France Sr.

“One of the ideas that we had several years ago was to race on a military base,” Kennedy said. “We’ve had a number of conversations with bases across the country. We also wanted to find a way to have a presence back here in the Southern California market. We’ve had racing at Auto Club for a number of years and at the L.A. Memorial Coliseum. We felt like it was a good opportunity for us to get back to our fans here in the greater Southern California region.

“We started having conversations with Naval Base Coronado I would say probably a couple years ago. Frankly, pretty surprised we were able to keep a lot of it under wraps until recently. One thing led to another. I would say the entire team on the base here has been fantastic partners. I know similar to a lot of our other events, there’s a lot of work that happens up until the announcement. There’s much more work that’s going to happen over the next 11 months. We’re excited to get started with them, promoting this event, turn out what is going the biggest spectacle of all sports in 2026.”

The exact layout is still being fine tuned but it will be a roughly three-mile circuit that runs around the base and alongside San Diego Bay.

“You’re going to see shots that will — you’ll have the backdrop of the Pacific Ocean, you’ll see other shots of the backdrop of San Diego,” Kennedy said. “Actually being here in a bit of the peninsula, in between the bay and the ocean is going to make for an amazing backdrop.

“We’re going to be weaving our way through the base, too. You’ll see a couple of carriers, F-18s on the tarmac. Some of the course will be set in stone a little bit as we’re making our way through the streets here on the base, then a lot of it is going to be a blank canvas. There will be a portion going out onto the tarmac, might have some long straightaways, more technical sessions.”

A preliminary version of the layout has been tested by several current drivers on iRacing but there are some elements that will need to be tweaked before an official unveiling in the fall.

“What we have done in the past, you can use Chicago as an example of this, is we’ll typically lay out different renditions of what the course could potentially look like,” Kennedy said. “That will be mostly our design development team, our competition team that’s based out of Concord at the R&D center. That is in collaboration with the location of the Navy base here, then our industry as well.

“Of the biggest voices we’ll hear from is our drivers. We had a small sample of drivers get on iRacing. They turned a few laps around the course. They shared a lot of feedback with us about straightaways, corners, runoff areas, all the things we would consider from a safety perspective but also a competition perspective, making sure there’s good passing zones, an adequate pit lane that is long enough, wide enough to be able to service all the vehicles.

“We’ll get a lot of that information from our drivers. Now that it’s announced, we’ll probably have a larger sample size of drivers we’ll be sharing it with. Then our OEM partners and teams as well.”

This event is scheduled for June 19-21 and will include Cup, Xfinity and Trucks — the first time the latter has competed on a street circuit following the Chicago event running just Cup and Xfinity.

“Yeah, it was really important for us to have all three series here,” Kennedy said. “We had a lot of conversations about it. Obviously having the Cup Series headline on Sunday is going to be the highlight of the weekend.

“Xfinity Series always puts on some of the best racing every single weekend. To have a partner like CW that has done a tremendous job promoting the series and the sport this year is going to be a great addition. Then the Truck Series as well-being on Friday is going to be another great add.

“Three different series, three different partners, three different styles of racing frankly. Each one bringing its own unique characteristics. We wanted to make sure we could deliver all three and deliver at least one per day so everyone has something to see.”

That Truck Series Friday will also be the military appreciation day. And while the event holistically will be around a military base, the races will be open to the general public.

For now, this is just a one year deal with Naval Base Corando and from there, it’s very much TBD.

“As of now, we’re focused on 2026,” Kennedy said. “As we talk about this concept in general, we’d love to have a race on a military base in the future. Not sure what that looks like beyond ’26, whether it stays in San Diego or goes to other locations, but it’s something we’ve discussed.”

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