Dr. Diandra: Five races to remember at Auto Club Speedway

NASCAR visits the two-mile version of Auto Club Speedway for the last time this weekend. Let’s bid farewell by remembering five races that illustrate the track’s transformation from boring to beloved.

California Speedway, as the track was originally known, was one of four tracks debuting in the late 1990s. Unlike the new tracks in Texas, Las Vegas and Homestead, the D-shaped California track was two miles with 14-degree banking in the turns.

The NASCAR Cup Series hadn’t raced in Southern California since Riverside International Raceway closed in 1988. By race weekend, Californian Jeff Gordon had already collected six checkered flags in 14 races.

The inaugural race featured long green-flag runs (averaging 45.6 laps) and 21 lead changes. Gordon led 113 of 250 laps, beating out eventual second- and third-place finishers Dale Jarrett and Terry Labonte.

The 250-lap (500-mile) race ran three hours and 13 minutes — just 10 minutes longer than 2022’s 400-mile race.

Brand-new tracks are exciting by virtue of being new, but they rarely make for great racing. New asphalt offers limited racing lines and makes passing hard. When a driver got the lead at California Speedway, he typically kept it for a while.

In six of the prior seven races, one driver led 100 or more laps out of 250. The exception was 2001, when Rusty Wallace led only 95 laps.

In 2004, Gordon led 81 laps on the way to victory. But, like Wallace three years earlier, he led the last 47 laps. This was the fourth race out of eight without a lead change in the last 40 laps.

The closest to a late pass for the lead was Gordon’s first win at the track. He led the last 11 laps.

But Gordon didn’t just win the race. His 12.87-second margin of victory is the largest in the