NASCAR’s inaugural Coronado race bizarre yet entertainingly historic

When NASCAR unveiled plans to host a street race on the naval base in San Diego, everyone thought they were joking. Now that the races have been held, we honestly still can’t tell if it was a good idea or not, but one thing’s for sure: it was a lot of fun for both the wrong and right reasons.

It became obvious very quickly that Qualcomm Circuit wasn’t your typical road course or street circuit, and it had little to do with the massive aircraft carrier sitting right outside Turn 5 (the USS Carl Vinson, whose bridge served as the commentary booth for the weekend; the USS Midway, which is now a museum, sits across the bay and was used to reveal Kyle Larson as the NASCAR 26 cover athlete shortly before the weekend).

O’Reilly Auto Parts Series driver Corey Day had the misfortune of proving this when a manhole cover—several of which NASCAR had bolted down prior to the weekend so cars wouldn’t bounce as they drove over—tore a hole into his radiator. Even with the damage, he somehow flipped it into a top-ten finish.

Later that Saturday, Sam Mayer slammed into Turn 1’s temporary retaining wall so hard that it bent the barrier and forced a lengthy red flag to fix. Most of the barriers on the track were recently used for the Las Vegas Grand Prix, meaning they are able to withstand Formula 1 car impacts but not a stock car twice its weight. Trackhouse owner Justin Marks, in a rare return to the driver’s seat, slammed the wall in Craftsman Truck Series practice and caused it to move, nearly taking out a photographer in the process.

Perhaps the weirdest moment of the weekend came during the aforementioned red flag for Mayer’s wreck. As the wall was being repaired, a fan managed to scale the catchfence and get onto the track before rushing to Sheldon Creed’s waiting car; the spectator and Creed are both locals according to some accounts, though Creed himself stressed he doesn’t know him.

The two conversed for a bit before he climbed back over the fence and tried to blend back in with the crowd, only to be stopped by police and NCIS (Naval Criminal Investigative Service) agents. Going onto a race track, even during a lull in the action, is obviously a dumb decision but doubly so when it’s located on an active military base.

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With all the weirdness that unfolded, many hoped the Cup Series would put on a more normal show as the highest level of stock car racing. Those prayers went unanswered.

Shane van Gisbergen, the Cup Series‘ road course ace, dominated the first half from the pole before getting taken out in a violent Turn 1 crash with O’Reilly race winner Austin Hill and Trackhouse team-mate Connor Zilisch. Much like in O’Reilly, this accident led to a stack-up that necessitated another red flag to fix the wall (and fortunately no attempted track invaders).

Things got so chaotic that Bubba Wallace, who views himself as the antithesis of a road course racer, went from being two laps down because of a loose wheel to at one point to fighting for a top five. To his surprise, he found himself as part of a 23XI Racing 1–2–3–5 run in the closing laps.

Tyler Reddick spearheaded that charge after taking the lead from Larson late. However, his team-mate Corey Heim stalked him before taking the lead with three laps to go. Despite Heim’s inexperience at the Cup level and Reddick’s own road racing success, he held off his team-mate to score the victory.

Like Wallace with his runner-up finish, Heim couldn’t believe he was able to pull it off. The reigning Truck Series champion is running a limited Cup calendar in the #67 before he replaces Riley Herbst in the #35, with Coronado being just his sixth start of the year. Ironically, Herbst would enjoy a strong run of his own in eighth.

In the last ten years, only three other drivers have won a Cup race as a part-timer alongside van Gisbergen in his NASCAR début at Chicago—which San Diego replaced—in 2023, A.J. Allmendinger at Indianapolis in 2021, and Justin Haley at Daytona in 2019; all but Haley were on road courses.

“To win on Father’s Day, get my first Cup win, that is just an incredible story and something we’ll definitely never forget,” Heim said. “It’s funny, in Victory Lane with him, then I go all the way to that naval ship, probably took an hour. Come back, he’s still in Victory Lane. He’s soaking it in. But he deserves it. He’s the only reason why I’m here today. Big props to my dad.”

While certainly an unusual weekend, one might wonder…

Will San Diego return in 2027?

Since Ben Kennedy became more involved in day-to-day operations, NASCAR has not been afraid to experiment with its races. The Clash at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and Bowman Gray Stadium are good examples, as is being able to bring back North Wilkesboro Speedway and the Chicago Street Race. Mexico City was the Cup Series‘ first international points race since 1958 before falling off the 2026 calendar due to the FIFA World Cup, though a comeback there isn’t out of the question.

San Diego, however, was by far Kennedy’s most ambitious project. The COO of NASCAR coordinated organising with the United States Navy, a challenging endeavour due to Coronado being an active and massive base.

Kennedy is well aware of the pitfalls that the weekend had, some of which are natural effects of creating a street race and were previously experienced in Chicago too. Others are more unique to San Diego like the tighter access and military restrictions.

“Going into this weekend, one of the things that we were most mindful of is the amount of people that you can get on and off of the base,” Kennedy explained. “People still have a good fan experience. You guys drove in probably over the bridge here to get onto Coronado. It is a pretty narrow passageway. We could have sold more tickets. We cut it off at 50,000 people per day. We wanted to make sure the ingress and egress was palatable for a lot of our fans.

“Over the last couple days, watching concessions, our bathrooms, some of the different areas, some logjams around some of the bridges. We had all-hands ops meetings every single day. We got everyone together after the event yesterday. Overnight, we were making phone calls. We brought in food trucks. Brought in extra staff to help work our bars, our concession stands. In real-time our team was working on areas to continue to improve that fan experience.”

Still, Kennedy was more than pleased by the interest from both the Navy and civilian fans about the weekend. Over 125 thousand people in total attended the weekend, with 67% being new fans attending their first race, across all 50 states and 17 different countries. There was also an 11% increase in women attendees compared to other NASCAR races and three times as many Hispanic fans.

In fact, he is open to trying out other military installations such as those in the Pacific Northwest, Colorado, or Northeast if those are willing to play ball too. Of course, he stressed that as much as he would “would love to return, we’re also cognisant of the fact this is active military base. We want to be mindful of that as well.”

Should a return to San Diego take place in 2027, race president Amy Lupo has mentioned possibilities to improve the viewing experience like ferries to bring fans to and from the track, barges as additional seating, and potentially a shorter track. The 5.47-km track is the longest on the NASCAR schedule.

“We found a way to create a culture where innovation, we put a lot of energy around it internally at NASCAR and across the industry. That gives us a lot of these different ideas,” Kennedy continued. “I know I’m the one that speaks on behalf of NASCAR. I can’t take credit for this idea. I can’t take credit for a lot of the work that went into this. But it’s the people at NASCAR that come up with a lot of these ideas. This was the next evolution of that.

“We had the ’21 schedule come out. We went to the first tracks for the first time. ’22 was the next step, went to the LA Coliseum, we had to build a temporary race track. Chicago was probably the boldest evolution of that, building an entirely temporary facility. This is the next iteration.

“We’ve heard a lot of great ideas from folks internally, across the industry. Fans on social media every day have different ideas. Every time we have those ideas, we take them to the pipeline, vet them, see if there are any that come to fruition.”

2026 NASCAR at San Diego – Results

Anduril 250 Race the Base (Cup)

United Rentals Driven to Serve 250 (O’Reilly)

Navy Serve 250 (Truck)