Track Trivia: Auto Club Speedway

The weather for this event last year--very rainy--made for a miserable race. Let's hope Mother Nature got her crying done last week, and we can have a good showing this week. It's an evening race for us on the East Coast, so hopefully the Auto Club 500 will be clean and not run into the wee hours (although I'm sure many of the female NASCAR enthusiasts out there will be switching over to the Oscars anyway.)

Built in 1997, the track is a 2-mile D-shaped oval with 14 degrees of banking in the turns and 11 degrees in the frontstretch. The grandstands hold 92,000 fans, which would seem easy to fill only 50 miles from Hollywood. But most drivers and a large percentage of fans are from east of the Mississippi, and the track has had trouble drumming up enthusiasm from both groups recently. 

Jimmie Johnson smoked practice and qualifying--and has won 3 times here--so he's my fantasy pick this week (and I used Matt Kenseth for my top-ten winning streak.) He's a California boy, so let's see what happens when we're California dreamin'.