Irwindale Speedway closure the latest blow to racing in Southern California

The final day of racing at Irwindale Speedway was both a party and a wake, one that began just after high noon Saturday and ended just before Sunday started.

There were funereal speeches — eulogies, if you like — tears and sadness. But there were also beach balls, cheers, flags and fireworks. In between there was racing — a lot of racing — with more than 140 drivers taking to the track in almost anything that had wheels and an engine before the final car crossed the finish line just before midnight.

Irwindale has long been home to the weird, wacky and wonderful, from trailer and figure-8 races to all-female demolition derbies and RV auto soccer. It was where drifting got its start in the U.S., the wide, banked asphalt track perfectly suited for what has become one of the fastest-growing racing series in the country. And it was where a radio-controlled car hit a world-record speed of 111 mph.

The track is — was? — historic and iconic so its closing after a quarter-century is another blow in what has been a long, slow decline of auto racing in the region.

A generation ago there were nearly a dozen tracks hosting regular events, from the Riverside International Raceway and the hulking Ontario Motor Speedway in the Inland Empire to Ascot Park’s half-mile dirt track near Gardena and Saugus Speedway, a third-mile oval built in a former rodeo arena in Santa Clarita.

Just a handful are left with even NASCAR at least temporarily pulling up stakes, selling most of the land Auto Club Speedway stood on in Fontana and leaving Southern California off its racing schedule for just the second time since 1997. That has left racing fans out in the cold while depriving up-and-coming drivers of the time they need behind the wheel to learn the sport.

“It’s devastating,” said 26-year-old Evelyn Vega, who has been making the 10-mile drive from San Dimas to Irwindale for more than half her life.

“It’s just so close that we would come as a weekend activity,” Vega said as her 18-month nephew, Maximilliano, sat behind the wheel of a Menards Series West car in the garage area. “My dad loves the racing. We grew up with it.”

Nearby, Donna Gunther, 67, who has been driving race cars twice as long as Vega has been alive, strapped into her battered No. 88 car — she would finish sixth in street stocks. Gunther’s home is Las Vegas and she once had several tracks scattered between here and there at which to race. No longer.

“That’s what makes it so hard to race in Southern California,” said crew member Matt Jackson, who has seen more than a half-dozen tracks close.

Most of Southern California’s tracks met their demise in the final decade of the 20th century when the land they sat on became more valuable for warehouses, shopping centers, storage yards and townhouses. Even the 71-year-old Willow Springs International Raceway in Kern County, a 600-acre complex of eight tracks that is home to the oldest permanent road course in the U.S., is up for sale, although spokesman Rick Romo said plans are to keep the site a racetrack.

Read more: L.A. was once ‘Drag City.’ Now the area’s last speedway is closing after a night of muscle car mayhem

Irwindale, which opened in 1999, was meant to help fill the void created by all those track closings, but it got off to an inauspicious start when a 23-year-old sprint-car driver named Casey Diemert died after hitting the wall during the track’s first practice session.

The $7-million facility was unique because of its versatility, boasting half- and third-mile mile banked oval tracks, a drag strip and a 6,500-seat grandstand. And its location in the armpit of the 605 and 210 freeways made it easily accessible from anywhere in the Southland.

In their heyday the tracks, nestled atop a former rock and sand quarry, were staples of NASCAR’s West Coast-based regional series, hosting nationally televised events, including the Toyota All-Star Showdown and NASCAR Cup Series drivers such as Tony Stewart, Jason Leffler and J.J. Yeley. But the track’s owners filed for bankruptcy in 2012 and plans were made to demolish the facility and replace it with an outlet mall.

Those plans changed when Tim Huddleston, a former champion driver who won 45 races at the track — ranking him among the top drivers 10 all-time — took over management at Irwindale in the final week of 2017, giving the facility a second chance. That rebirth was short-lived, however, with Los Angeles-based IDS Real Estate purchasing the 63-acre site in 2022, then announcing in September the track would give way to an industrial park and commercial development.

“Losing a track like Irwindale is definitely going to be a big blow to auto racing, NASCAR circle-track racing,” said Ryan Vargas, who watched his first race at Irwindale as a 9-year-old and returned to run in Saturday’s final event, only to have his night end in a crash with six laps left in the pro late model main event.

“Irwindale was my home. There will definitely be a hole in that market.”

But track closings aren’t just an issue in Southern California. Vargas, a La Mirada native who has relocated to North Carolina, said iconic short tracks have also been shuttered recently in places like Greenville, S.C., and Midland, N.C., the heart of stock-car country.

“There’s so many drag strips, so many short tracks falling victim to land development and stuff like that,” said Vargas, who called Irwindale the best short track in the country. “It’s happening everywhere. It’s a really tough world for racing because of all the valuable real estate.”

Many tracks, such as the ones in Riverside and Santa Clarita, were built in rural areas when the land was cheap. As suburban sprawl pushed cities farther and farther out, that land became more valuable for shopping centers and warehouses while neighbors began complaining of the noise from the thundering, angry bark of the stock-car engines.

Promoters were also hurt by falling attendance, which cut into their already narrow profit margins.

“These race tracks, they’re passion projects right? They don’t really turn big profits,” Vargas said. “These tracks don’t have TV dollars. These tracks just have ticket sales and entry fees. That’s their only source of income.

“That’s difficult. It’s hard to keep up with the changing times.”

That’s bound to have an impact on the development of young drivers, who have traditionally depended on short tracks to learn their craft the same way baseball players rely on the minor leagues.

“That teaches you racing right there,” said Ron Hornaday Jr., who began his career driving stock cars at Saugus Speedway and went on to become a four-time champion in NASCAR’s Craftsman Truck Series. “It taught you moving people out of the way and getting moved out of the way, of not running into them. And doing it with finesse.

“You can’t teach that; just being in a race car and making laps.”

Consider Vargas’ driver’s education.

After watching that first race from the stands at Irwindale, he was hooked on the sport and by age 12 he was racing Bandoleros — entry-level cars that are slow to accelerate and top off at 70 mph — at the track. He quickly advanced to super late models and before his 20th birthday he had graduated to the NASCAR Xfinity Series, where he now races full time.

“This is where I learned to race,” said Vargas, who brought his family back for Saturday’s finale, which seemed appropriate since Irwindale has long been a family track, with sons — and daughters — following their fathers and grandfathers from the stands to the pits and into the driver’s seat. Huddleston’s son Trevor dominated Saturday’s first race, an ARCA Menards Series West exhibition, and will finish as Irwindale’s all-time leader with 87 career wins, according to track officials.

“Everybody likes to think of NASCAR as being an East Coast, Southern sport,” said Vargas, 24, whose primary sponsor is Santa Fe-based Swann Security. “But there a lot of very, very talented drivers on the West Coast. Without having a short track there, they may not even have a chance.”

That was especially true for Vargas, who couldn’t drive himself to the races in those early days since he wasn’t old enough to get a license. If there hadn’t been a track 15 miles from his parents’ house, Vargas might never had gotten the opportunity to race.

There are still places that provide that in Southern California, but they are shrinking in number. The Orange Show Speedway, a quarter-mile asphalt oval in San Bernardino, has been around for 77 years, helping launch the careers of NASCAR Cup champions Kevin Harvick and Kurt Busch. It still offers races in various stock car divisions as does the Perris Auto Speedway in Riverside County and the Ventura Raceway.

Read more: NASCAR wants to race again in Southern California, but when will it happen?

Meanwhile Huddleston, who squeezed a few final seasons out of the Irwindale track, is moving to Bakersfield, where he has teamed with Harvick, a Bakersfield native, to refurbish the former Kern County Raceway Park as Kevin Harvick’s Kern Raceway, a 120-acre motorsports facility with a half-mile asphalt oval and a one-third-mile dirt one.

Yet for beginning drivers from L.A. and Orange County, who are struggling to race on a shoestring budget, that track might just as well be on another planet.

“It’s just a two-hour drive but that’s gas money, that’s towing a trailer, that’s potentially hotel stays,” Vargas said. “So it’s a struggle if you’re operating on a budget. When we were getting our foot in the door we drove to Bakersfield and then drove home the night of practice because we didn’t want to buy a hotel room.”

Getting started in racing has always been expensive and for many drivers — and fans —- Irwindale’s closing will raise those costs. So as much as Saturday’s finale was a party and a wake, it also marked the end of an era for racing in Southern California when Jeffrey Peterson took the final checkered flag in track history.

Sometime in the wee hours Sunday morning, the lights over the speedway went dark for the last time.

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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.