NASCAR is celebrating the 250th Anniversary of the United States Navy this weekend, with a one-of-a-kind spectacle in San Diego, California. An event more than two years in the making, NASCAR, for the first time in the sport’s history, will compete on an active Navy Base, when the Cup, O’Reilly, and CRAFTSMAN Truck Series rip around the 16-turn, 3.4-mile street course on Naval Base Coronado.
When it comes to the overall aesthetic, Naval Base Coronado provides one of the most scenic backdrops in motorsports, with the Pacific Ocean and the contents of the Naval Base on display as drivers make laps around the longest course on the NASCAR circuit. To commemorate this moment in history, more than half of the entries across NASCAR’s National Series will feature a special patriotic or Navy-themed design.
The racetrack itself, though, brings its own challenge for the drivers, and now, as they’ve finally gotten the opportunity to check it out – some in-person, some in the simulator, and others on iRacing – there’s some real anticipation building for what some drivers believe is going to be one of the toughest road course events in NASCAR history, on what some drivers have gone as far as calling a “really fast and sketchy” course.
Chris Buescher has long been considered one of the most underrated drivers on road courses in the NASCAR Cup Series and is among the drivers who believe the Anduril 250 is going to provide some major difficulties, saying that he thinks it’ll be “the hardest road race that anybody in the garage has ever run”.
“Just from the standpoint that there are so many corners. I think we have labeled 16, but if we labeled like some other tracks, it would probably come out to 30 [corners],” Buescher said. “It’s going to be very difficult. It’s very narrow in places. It’s extremely wide in others, to the point where you’re almost trying to figure out where in the world you should be in that 100-feet of racetrack to set up for a corner.”
Of course, preparing for the event isn’t necessarily the tough part. Running laps around the manufacturer-provided simulator or on iRacing can only prepare you for the challenge that lies ahead to a certain extent. Getting to the racetrack and walking it on Thursday is going to be very important in seeing the main differences between the sim and the real-world experience, and Friday’s opening minutes of NASCAR Cup Series practice could get treacherous as drivers try to find the limits… without finding the wall.
“It’s going to be very difficult to go in there and figure out how to get that thing right from the get-go. All of the sim that we’re going to continue to run and have run already, it’s not going to be the real thing until you get there,” Buescher added. “I remember Chicago for the first time. All of the things you were able to do in the simulator, and then you get to the racetrack and you’re like, ‘Yeah, I can wreck a race car here if I drive like the sim,’ but I’m telling you right now, that’s exactly where we’re going to be. We’re going to have placed like that, where we get comfortable in the simulator, and we’re going to say, ‘Oh, those bumps aren’t bad. I can drive through it,’ and you’re going to get to the racetrack, and that’s not going to be the case.”
Connor Zilisch and Shane Van Gisbergen, teammates at Trackhouse Racing and two of the favorites to win Sunday’s Anduril 250 at Naval Base Coronado, told Dale Earnhardt, Jr. on this week’s episode of the Dale Jr. Download that they’ve both wrecked several times while practicing for this weekend’s event on iRacing.
“It’s definitely tough,” Zilisch said on the Dale Jr. Download. “Chicago [Street Course] was tough, but I feel like this track is even more technical than that was. I feel like that was a lot of 90-degree corners, and just kind of stop-and-go’s and a lot of corners were the same, and I feel like this track has got some more character to it, so I’m excited for it.”
“It’s the whole track. Every corner I see on the track is different, unique, bumpy, challenging, like, I can see a challenge at every corner, almost,” Van Gisbergen said. “I feel like the first year [at Chicago], you saw a lot of cars were high and soft, like the No. 91 car, and then everyone has gotten greedy; like it’s gotten lower and lower and stiffer because that’s how the car makes grip, but there’s a huge compromise between getting the floor on the ground and ride quality, so, luckily it’s an open practice so we’ll get to try some things, but it’s a huge compromise and you’re going to see some bad handling cars.”
Of the drivers who have had the opportunity to turn some laps around the 3.4-mile street course in the simulator, or on iRacing, the majority are racing about just how rough and bumpy some sections of the racetrack are, and how difficult that is going to make it to run a consistent lap.
“It’s fitting to be near aircraft carriers,” Buescher joked. “We’re going to be in the air quite a bit, and I think that it’s rough in a lot of ways.”
For Ryan Blaney, who has likely seen Naval Base Coronado more than any other driver with the promotional stuff he’s been doing with NASCAR and The Navy, the sentiment is pretty much the same, saying: “Turn one is pretty high commit, high speed. Turn two is very downhill, and then it gets pretty rough through three, four, and the exit of five is super rough. They’ve worked on a couple of patches, like the railroad tracks and stuff like that. They said they would pave it some to help it out, but it’s going to be bump and it’s going to be tight.”
“It’s going to be a lot like Chicago,” Blaney added. “Chicago was narrow, bumpy, things like that, so we’ve dug into it a good bit, the best we can. “I’m just looking forward to seeing it all put together. It will be challenging. It’s a big racetrack and something like three-and-a-half miles, so there are a lot of corners to do well in or mess up in, but it’ll be a unique challenge.”
The surface isn’t the only challenge that lies ahead, though. At a base level, just learning the track and committing it to memory as quickly as possible will be crucial for putting down good laps in practice and qualifying, which in turn, could easily make-or-break the weekend. And as Joe Gibbs Racing driver Chase Briscoe pointed out in the lead-up to the event, there are so many corners that are important on the circuit, as they set you up for a strong run in another.
“It is probably, I feel like, the most technical racetrack that I’ve ever run on in my career. You go to some road courses, and there’s just some corners that don’t really matter, like, they’re pretty standard, everybody’s going to be the exact same speed through them. [At] San Diego, there’s not a single corner that is not like a massive time gain or loss that just compounds the next one. Every corner is so technical and each, there’s just […], there’s no flow,” Briscoe said.
With limited on-track time for the weekend, it’ll be extremely important to have a mistake-free practice on Friday and log laps, in hopes of securing a solid qualifying effort on Saturday. Those limited opportunities to hit the racetrack will make preparation extremely valuable – provided the real thing is anywhere near comparable to the sim.
“If a guy’s not put in time, they’re going to get exposed, I feel like, when they get there,” Briscoe added. “Just because it’s one of those racetracks where if you haven’t prepared and done your due diligence. I mean, obviously, the sim could not be accurate to real life at all, but as of now, it is an extremely challenging racetrack.”
The NASCAR Cup Series will make competitive laps at Naval Base Coronado for the first time on Friday, June 19, at 5:00 PM ET, when the series gets to participate in a 50-minute practice session around the 3.4-mile road course. Qualifying will take place on Saturday, June 20, at 2:30 PM ET, with the Anduril 250 happening Sunday, June 21, at 4:00 PM ET on Prime Video.
