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[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.

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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.


The meeting soon took place in a maze of construction trailers placed in a dusty corner of a vast area of frantic building activity. Greg was brimming with energy and intention and introduced me to Rich Peters, the president of Penske Motorsports, Inc. and young Bill Miller, the track's first marketing director.
Greg Penske, like his father, was and is a force of nature and I quickly learned that he viewed almost everything through the eyes of the customer. Creating high expectations and great experiences for California Speedway's "guests" was the central focus of almost everything we worked on together.
Peters struck me as stunningly bright and creative. He was the investment banker who'd helped build the Penske empire and he possessed an uncanny ability to find the optimum commercial proposition in just about anything we discussed but also had remarkable instincts about balancing a transaction from a buyer's and seller's point of view.
Miller had been with Penske for some time, having started his racing career at Michigan Speedway. Bill and his young #2, Craig Rust, along with promotions manager Kelly Clancy and PR director Jay Lucas, who came from the L.A. Dodgers, would soon become close collaborators and friends. This great team was intent on upping racing's game in one of America's toughest markets and it was truly exciting being part of something so big and so challenging.
As I was leaving that first meeting, I stopped by the office of someone I'd know since the dawn of my days working in racing. That someone was the late Les Richter, a legendary ex-L.A. Rams player who had run Riverside International Raceway during its glory years from 1963-'84. From the start, Richter was one of the key men behind bringing California Speedway to life and everyone called him "Coach." He was an imposing but friendly figure with a big heart. He'd recently successfully run the operations side of NASCAR and been involved in launching and sustaining the International Race of Champions with Roger Penske and Jay Signore initiated by the vision of former Ontario Motor Speedway's founding president, David Lockton. "Coach" was full of humor, wisdom and passion and was the authentic soul of Penske's new speedway.
I brought with me the race program from the original 1970 California 500 at Ontario Motor Speeday and some of images of the ads and billboards from the first two seasons of the long-gone track. It proved to be good context and starting point for the conversation. Those relics from a quarter century earlier resonated with everyone and helped establish the value of building a brand for the new speedway.
All those I met with that day were inspiring in their intellect, can-do spirit and commitment and I was thrilled that the Pfanner Communications team was hired to explore redesigning the track's logo but there was a caveat. We only had the upcoming weekend to make the entire design process happen.
After an exhausting 48 hours working with a design team comprised of RACER's art directors Keith May and Paul Laguette along with No Fear (action sports apparel) designer, Erik Casillas we presented our concepts to Roger, Greg and the Penske Motorsports leadership team. Our favored design was quickly chosen and it featured what we called the "turn 4 swoosh" icon (pictured above). To my astonishment, Roger adopted that same icon and logo style for Michigan Speedway, Nazareth Speedway and North Carolina Speedway, Penske Motorsports and even Penske Racing.
Next we began work on the color palette studies for the grandstands, then came the ticket sales collateral, tickets, race programs, print ads, radio spots and a TV spot that was directed by RACER's co-founder Jeff Zwart (watch video below). Oh, and we even executed the credential designs.
All along the way, I worked very closely with Greg, Rich and Bill and came to respect each for their intellect and laser focus on elevating the quality of fan experience. I'm certain I learned far more from them than any of them ever learned from me.

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All along the way, I worked very closely with Greg, Rich and Bill and came to respect each for their intellect and laser focus on elevating the quality of fan experience. I'm certain I learned far more from them than any of them ever learned from me.
The Pfanner Communications team of Donna Chamberlain (Pfanner), Steve Nickless, Keith May, Ree Tucker and Molly Binks worked tirelessly to keep up with the tsunami of projects related to the California Speedway launch. Thankfully, our marketing and promotions collaboration with the team at California Speedway worked and the ironically-named inaugural "California 500" NASCAR Winston Cup race and the Marlboro 500 CART PPG World Series event were sellouts in a market that had not had a major league permanent race track since 1988.
After the successful 1997 running of the California 500, Roger and Greg met with me in late June to float the idea Penske Motorsports acquiring our company with the intention of having us do similar work for all of Penske Motorsports' racetracks. After only a moment's reflection, I declined the opportunity to sell our company but I was sure there were other ways we could work together. Roger and Greg didn't miss a beat and we quickly worked out a plan to provide creative and publishing services to all of Penske Motorsports which we did for the next several years.
This was not the first or the last time RACER would be approached regarding potential acquisition. One year later, Haymarket Media, LTD, Publishers of Autosport magazine reached out to me and began a conversation that eventually resulted in us selling the majority of our company to them in early 2001. As fate would have it, the man who later sat along side me during a key meeting with Haymarket would be Rich Peters. Rich offered his considerable skills and experience out of friendship stemming from the work we had done together in launching California Speedway. I remain forever grateful for his kindness and as proof of Rich's amazing intuition, he also accurately predicted that I would eventually re-acquire RACER from Haymarket – which happened in March 2012.


In late 1998, Greg Penske transitioned back to focusing on growing his burgeoning Penske Auto Group business. My friend Scott Atherton, whom I'd first met when he was General Manager of Laguna Seca, moved from the presidency of Nazareth Speedway to lead California Speedway into the new millennium. He was a worthy successor to Greg and I remain very proud of our work together.
By May of 1999, the International Speedway Corporation purchased Penske Motorsport and within a year our role soon was reduced to providing creative services to California Speedway. Scott Atherton left California Speedway in mid 2000 to lead the American Le Mans Series and our friendship and business relationship continues to this day.
Upon Atherton's departure to the ALMS, Bill Miller, who had been serving as ISC's director of consumer marketing, made a welcome return to California Speedway and we began to grapple with the sport's growing headwinds and the fallout from the ongoing CART/IRL split which had decimated open-wheel ticket sales. Overall, tickets and suites were becoming harder to sell in a facility that had seen a significant increase in both, built to satisfy Wall Street. By 2004 a second NASCAR Cup race was added and the battle to sell out the two NASCAR races became all but impossible. This eventually spelled the end of Miller's remarkable and crucial involvement in California Speedway. Today he serves as the senior VP of operations for SEMA and also oversees the Performance Racing Trade Show and magazine.
Our agency relationship with the California Speedway continued through 2005 and during that latter period our team began to work with the team at ISC on a global brand study for all of ISC's tracks and Pfanner Communications was later retained to create the logo architecture for the Daytona 500 in 2005, 2006 and 2007.
It was during our latter years of our involvement with California Speedway that I first came to know current president Dave Allen, who came to the track in a marketing capacity in 1999. He impressed me from the start. He had the same bright spark of passion tempered by a the same focus on the customer experience I saw in California Speedway's founding team.
In late 2005, California Speedway's new president, Gillian Zucker, wanted to go a new direction with creative services and she hired another agency to try to reverse the flagging fortunes of one of American racing's crown jewels. Ticket sales plummeted initially and in all fairness, it had little to do with marketing direction or creative executions. The market was changing and NASCAR was suffering from over-exposure. In a game-changing moment, Zucker and Allen scored a landmark naming rights deal with Southern California's AAA to rename the facility "Auto Club Speedway" in 2008. They also tried novel approaches to bringing the buzz and the fans back and slowly, over time it began to work but it was not enough to save the second NASCAR Cup date, which was lost in the schedule re-alignment of 2011.
Approximately 12,000 seats were removed from Turn 1 in 2014 and the space allocated for each individual seat was expanded so the speedway's seating capacity fell from 92,000 to 68,000.
When Zucker left the speedway in late 2014 to take on the top business development role with the L.A. Clippers, Dave Allen was elevated to president of Auto Club Speedway and he has continued to focus on improving attendance and guest's experience.

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When Zucker left the speedway in late 2014 to take on the top business development role with the L.A. Clippers, Dave Allen was elevated to president of Auto Club Speedway and he has continued to focus on improving attendance and guest's experience.
This weekend, Allen and his able and hard-working team at Auto Club Speedway will celebrate an amazing 20-year run that saw some of greatest highs and lows in the history of our sport. From Jeff Gordon's home state win in the inaugural California 500 in June of 1997, to Greg Moore's tragic death during the CART Champ Car event on Halloween Day in 1999, to Gil de Ferran's still-unbeaten world closed course record lap in his Marlboro Team Penske Reynard-Honda of 241.428 mph set in October 2000, to Southern California native Jimmie Johnson's unrivaled tally of six NASCAR Cup victories at the track as he continues his relentless quest to become the greatest NASCAR racer in history.
Auto Club Speedway truly represents hallowed ground to race fans but after numerous attempts to make something other than a single NASCAR Cup race viable, Auto Club Speedway is now a massive stage with only a single major event each year. Yet I can't imagine that will be the case forever and thankfully, the track remains busy with rentals, club level events and a 1/4 mile drag strip, so the future still looks bright because those who own it and operate it have been able to continually adapt to changing times.
The world's fastest racetrack has a legacy that very few tracks can claim. It is one of the wonders of the racing world and it has greatness in its DNA that carries forward the brave spirit of the remarkable people who built it and preserved it for generations to come. I for one will never take it for granted. Auto Club Speedway is forever part of RACER's story and will always be in my heart. All of us at RACER look forward to its continued success and evolution for decades to come.
Our creative services and brand consulting work continues under the Racer Studio name and we've worked some of the best companies involved in racing.
1997 NASCAR California 500:
1997 CART Marlboro 500:
2000 Gil de Ferran world record qualifying run, CART Marlboro 500:

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California Speedway ad 1997

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3OpZ5L8Cic

Published on Mar 24, 2017
Racer produced this ad in 1997 for the inaugural season of California Speedway (Now Auto Club Speedway).

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1997 California 500 Full Race official ABC broadcast

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQErkXMXZKY






Matthew Kowal

Hard to believe the track now has the oldest asphalt surface because Atlanta is being repaved, and despite opposition from fans and some drivers, the repave is official. All they will do, is put a few inches of new asphalt over the existing, they will not touch the bumps, banking, or reconfigure the track at all, just a new fresh coat of asphalt since the current surface is obviously and has been falling apart. The oldest surface is Dover when the track switched from asphalt to concrete in the beginning of 1995. I can see this track's surface last until the end of the decade, but it has weepers, and slits created to help the drainage issue where they used concrete saws.

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1997 CART World Series Full Race official ESPN Speed World broadcast

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUDFyVLtTX4

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2000 Cart Fontana Gill De Ferran's Close Course Record

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DF8GTL0_rMA

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The Best Car Scene is Tampa Racing!
Tampa Racing has the best Florida Car Scene Year Round!
Florida's Best Import Car Scene is Tampa Racing!
Tampa Racing sets another record: number of readers on Tampa Racing
at the SAME time: 3,302!
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There are currently 309 users online. 1 members and 308 guests
Most users ever online was 3,302, May 5 at 02:11 PM.

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So Tampa Racing reset the counter and mercy sakes! June 22 2016, Another record set for
number of readers on Tampa Racing at the same time: 2,041
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Most users ever online was 2,041, 06-22-2016 at 06:36 PM.

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The previous record was 2,668 set on August 29 2015
far exceeding the 1,900+ from the "old days".....
and yes folks, as the primary poster accused of "ruining the site"
I accept full responsibility.....

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