senor honda

[h=2]20 years at the fastest racetrack on earth[/h] By Paul Pfanner, Founder and President of Racer Media & Marketing, Inc.


It should surprise no one who reads RACER or RACER.com that some of the most meaningful moments of my life have come at racetracks. For me, some racetracks hold the memories of who I am, where I started and what I dreamed of. They also hold memories of race days past along with the hope of great days ahead. As a child I organized racing events for bikes, slot cars or anything with wheels. I made hand-drawn tickets, posters and even race programs driven by a desire to share my excitement for racing with all of my friends. The website you are reading is here because of a spark ignited in my soul at a racetrack decades ago.
Over time, I've come to appreciate how fragile and fleeting racetracks can sometimes be. The most important racetracks of my early days are now gone. There are hollow spaces in my heart where Ontario Motor Speedway and Riverside International Raceway once filled me with awe and inspired my passion and dedication to the sport.
My first job in racing was at Ontario Motor Speedway as a zit-faced teenaged parking lot attendant in the hot, smoggy summer of 1971. If you are old enough to have been there during the qualifying weekend for the second annual California 500 USAC Indy car race at the track, I was the guy with the blue hat directing you into the East Parking lot where the Ontario Mills Mall now stands.
If you're not familiar with OMS, it was a massive, modern replica of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway located in Ontario, Calif. It was built in anticipation of racing becoming "the sport of the '70s." In addition to having a 2.5-mile oval that was virtually identical to Indy, it also had a FIA-spec road racing circuit and an NHRA drag strip. It was beautiful, clean and set a new standard. Celebrities and racing luminaries comprised the OMS board of directors including Roger Penske, who was only in his sixth year as a team owner.
The next year OMS became the site of the racing's first 200 mph lap at the hands Jerry Grant in one of Dan Gurney's fabled Eagles but trouble was in the air. Despite all the investment and hoopla surrounding the Indy car, NASCAR and NHRA events at the track, it was losing massive amounts of money due to its staggering debt service and the high cost of marketing in the L.A. area. Sadly, OMS was doomed by its financing and the struggling economy in the 1970s. It was sold to Chevron Oil in 1980 and demolished soon after after only 11 years of operation.
To my young eyes Ontario Motor Speedway represented everything that racing could and should become and I often dreamed that it could be resurrected and racing be given a second chance in one of the most valuable and challenging markets in the world.
A Second Chance
With the 20th Anniversary of Auto Club Speedway being celebrated this weekend during the running of the Auto Club 400 Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series event, it is the perfect time to look back on the history of this great track and what it has meant to American racing and to RACER during our own silver Anniversary year.

Roger Penske

RACER's relationship with the track began before it was born with an inbound phone call in the summer of 1996. Our office manager told me that Roger Penske was on the line. I first thought it was a prank but to my eternal amazement, it was indeed none other than Roger S. Penske himself.
The reason for the call was the welcome news that Roger was considering one of my closest friends for a senior position in his racing merchandise business. After 15 minutes of discussion about my friend's experience, character and abilities, the conversation soon turned to Roger's growing publically-traded racetrack business, Penske Motorsports, Inc. that had recently been launched in alliance with the NASCAR's Bill France Jr.
At the time racing was in the midst of a racetrack building boom fueled by NASCAR's skyrocketing popularity and big dollars from Wall Street. Roger owned North Carolina Motor Speedway, Nazareth Speedway and Michigan International Speedway and now he was building California Speedway — a modern version of the two-mile, D-shaped Michigan track (built in 196 that was rising out of the toxic rubble of the former Kaiser Steel mill in Fontana, Calif., located just five miles from the former site of Ontario Motor Speedway.
Roger was aware of the advertising work our in-house agency, Pfanner Communications, had done for the No Fear apparel company and he liked RACER's recent CART PPG Indy Car World Series Fan Guide. So, at the end of the conversation he asked if we would be interested in helping Penske Motorsports launch the new speedway in our home market. Naturally, I was intrigued and agreed to meet the new track's president, Roger's son, Greg Penske and the track's young marketing director, Bill Miller at the building site for the new California Speedway.