Renovations and redevelopment will turn this long 2-mile into a super-short half mile, and that’s gonna take some time to complete.

After the running of the Pala Casino 400 on Sunday, we won’t see this track again until 2025. This week, NASCAR heads out west to Auto Club Speedway, a 2-mile track that opened in 1997. Every year I stick him in the picks for Daytona and Talladega, but since he’s flown under the radar in recent years, I didn’t this time. In true insane fashion, the 500 lived up to the hype with a winner we never might have guessed, though technically we should have because Ricky Stenhouse Jr.

Suddenly, there were enough wrecks to take out my entire fantasy team, increase my heart rate, and make me shake my fist at the sky. The Daytona 500 was kinda boring-until it wasn’t.