At California, heat is always on in more ways than one

FONTANA, Calif. -- As the sun dropped behind 8,800-foot Cucamonga Peak, bathing the Southern California sky in a rosy glow, the withering heat that has suffocated this region for the better part of five days at last began to abate. Finally, it all came together for California Speedway -- a relatively comfortable evening and a race with the perfect hook, fan favorite Dale Earnhardt Jr. trying desperately to keep his playoff hopes alive.

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What a pity so few turned out to see it. They'll blame the heat wave or the holiday weekend, say that many bought tickets but didn't show up. This gleaming 2-mile speedway has taken plenty of hits over the last four years, since it was awarded a second Nextel Cup date at the expense of revered Darlington Raceway, and attendance at the once sold-out facility immediately began to slip. All those empty seats in February are one thing -- almost any race will struggle in the wake of the Daytona 500 -- but Labor Day weekend has always been the track's big, bankable, signature event.

Until Sunday night, and the shockingly low turnout for the Sharp Aquos 500. Walking down pit road as two F-117 stealth fighters streaked overhead to punctuate the final notes of the national anthem, it was hard to find a section in the long red and yellow grandstand that was full. Locals estimated the crowd to be about 70,000, this in a 92,000-seat facility located in the largest market NASCAR visits each season, in the second-largest metropolitan area in the nation, and on the doorstep of the ninth-largest city in the world.

How has this happened? Apathy toward a sport whose novelty has worn off? An overestimation of ticket demand, based on sellouts at a track that originally featured 20,000 fewer seats and only one event each year? The quality of the competition? Scheduling that places one date in typically wet February, and another in normally sizzling early September? A location too far from the core market that the series is attempting to cultivate?

Likely, it's all of the above. The track that once seemed a slam dunk, which sold out its first seven Cup Series events and became the darling of a sport bent on major-market expansion, faces as many challenges as any other on the circuit. With one exception -- no other facility has the promise and potential of metro Los Angeles in its backyard, a fact that for California Speedway raises the bar into the stratosphere, and almost creates expectations that may never be met.

Yes, it was hot this weekend, oppressively hot, hot enough that 11,000 people in greater Los Angeles were without power Sunday because all those air conditioners were placing too much strain on the electrical grid. They sold 500,000 bottles of water this weekend at the speedway, and treated about 1,000 people for heat-related illness. In the eyes of track president Gillian Zucker, the attendance numbers were mitigated by the heat wave.

"I'm not too worried about it. It was warm. It was definitely warm. I think you've got to give it to Southern California race fans, because with every radio and TV station telling you stay inside, don't leave your home, excessive heat warning, hydrate, and the number of people who came out [Sunday] to enjoy racing, I thought, was very spectacular," she said.

"As everybody knows, this is a late-purchasing market. Everybody makes decisions at the last possible moment. So when you've got triple-digit heat, and they're warning about it all week, and they're saying it's going to lead into the weekend and it's probably going to get hotter as you go along, that is not good for sales trending."

But it's been brutally hot here before on Labor Day weekend, and this race has still come within a few thousand tickets of selling out. And granted, the place isn't exactly Bristol when it comes to on-track action, but Earnhardt's last-ditch, almost hopeless quest to secure a Chase berth provided more than enough suspense to carry the night. By California standards, the spectators who came out Sunday were treated to a pretty good show.

"I don't think there's any question this was the best race we've ever seen at California Speedway," Zucker said.

But like everything else since 2004, it wasn't enough to fill the place up, despite a pool of 16 million potential ticket-holders to draw from. They've tried everything -- having the track president learn Spanish, drafting Juan Montoya to try and lure the Hispanic market, bringing Jimmie Johnson to San Diego again and again, even starting up a Myspace page. Still, rain or shine, hot or cold, seats remain empty. No other track in NASCAR faces the scrutiny that California does in terms of attendance, as evidenced by a post-race interview session that saw Zucker surrounded by a dozen reporters, all wondering what's missing here.

"I don't think anything's missing," she said. "I actually think you see a lot of impact from the great initiatives we're doing."

Really, that's all she can do -- add millions of dollars in improvements, plead with NASCAR for better dates, and try to attract the disparate locates of Los Angeles and the Inland Empire at the same time. It's a tough job. Because although the speedway works hard to tie itself with the glamour of Hollywood, redesigning its logo to include movie-premier spotlights, and giving competitors the red carpet treatment Wednesday night in a kickoff party featuring the likes of Paris Hilton, this isn't L.A.'s speedway. Anyone who's ever driven from downtown Los Angeles to Fontana knows that.

The track truly belongs to the Inland Empire, that long arm of sprawl stretching from Interstate 605 to the San Bernardino Mountains, a home to 3 million people consistently overshadowed by its glitzier neighbor to the west. Over on the site of the old Ontario Motor Speedway, they're building a sports arena, a first for the area. It's too bad that too few people seem to realize that the place has one already, a beautiful but ultimately frustrated facility hulking at the intersection of Interstate 10 and Cherry Avenue.

The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer.