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NASCAR Holdings has held discussions with the Dodgers about staging a NASCAR race at the historic Dodger Stadium in the coming years, according to people familiar with the matter, one of the options that’s been evaluated in Southern California. With the Fontana-based Auto Club Speedway now partially demolished and some believing NASCAR’s L.A. Coliseum experiment has run its course, the racing series has been evaluating other places to race in Southern California.
NASCAR Senior VP/Racing Development & Strategy Ben Kennedy told the AP in February that the company had evaluated a dozen different ideas in the market, but he didn’t reveal any of them, aside from the one that’s already been announced: a new possible short track in Fontana, to replace the previously 2.0-mile track whose land was mostly sold off. That project has yet to be given the green light, which has raised questions about NASCAR’s commitment to it. Now, sources say Dodger Stadium is one of the options Kennedy was referencing.
The chances of such a race happening for next year was unclear, as were the other viable options. But NASCAR President Steve Phelps told Fox Sports during Daytona 500 week that NASCAR would be racing next year in Southern California, raising expectations that the series will make its way to the market in 2025 at one venue or another. NASCAR and the Dodgers did not respond to requests for comment. It was also unclear whether the event would be a street-circuit style race around the venue or a short-track style temporary circuit built inside the ballpark. The Dolphins have set up such a street circuit around Hard Rock Stadium for the annual F1 race it now hosts.
While it’s possible that NASCAR could end up racing at a site other than Dodger Stadium, the evaluation of the site highlights that the racing series continues to look at innovative and unique places to hold races, after hosting the L.A. Coliseum stadium race the last three years and its first Chicago street race last year.
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Dodger Stadium first emerged as a potential site for a motorsports race last year when the Formula E electric racing series was reported to have held discussions about such an idea for 2025. At the time, motorsports news site The Race reported that racing team owner Michael Andretti had helped set up the discussions. Andretti’s business partner, Group 1001 President & CEO Dan Towriss, is a former senior executive at Guggenheim, where Dodgers owner Mark Walter serves as CEO of Guggenheim Partners.
Formula E CEO Jeff Dodds told Forbes: “LA is one of the locations we are looking at, another large U.S. city, around the Dodgers Stadium -- around, inside, who knows! But we are excited about the conversations we are having with them.”
