FONTANA, Calif. -- It's time to get off Gillian's Island.

The ruse is up. Gillian Zucker seems to be a very nice and sharp lady who works extremely hard at running Auto Club Speedway and trying to convince all of Southern California what the rest of America already knows: that NASCAR is pretty darn cool, and one of the best sports in the world to experience seeing in person.

But it's not working. It's nothing, really, to be ashamed about. The almighty National Football League couldn't even make it work in fickle Southern California.

“

I love NASCAR. ... So I continue to be excited about the idea of introducing a community to this sport. That's why I don't get discouraged.

”

-- GILLIAN ZUCKER

Zucker, the track president at the facility where Sunday's Auto Club 500 was run, has been very creative with her marketing program. Not as creative as she is with fudging attendance numbers and convincing herself that her track really does deserve the two Sprint Cup dates it currently owns on the 38-race schedule (counting two non-points events), but creative nonetheless.

Sunday's official guesstimate on attendance was 72,000.

Seriously? The grandstands, which seat 92,000, might have been half full. Maybe. But that might even be a stretch. Let's say they were and give 'em 46,000 for that -- which would mean there were another 26,000 in the infield, where there couldn't have been half that.

A most generous but much closer to accurate estimate on the attendance would have been, say, 56,000. And that's not enough to justify continuing to come this far west two times a year. It's that simple.

Gillian's logic

We all know Kansas Speedway, a place that seats 81,687 and generally sells all of them plus puts another 10,000 in the infield, is about to get a second date. It's likely to happen as soon as next season, when the $680 million Hollywood Casino at Kansas Speedway is set to open overlooking Turn 2. If Kansas gets a second NASCAR weekend, the date has to come from somewhere.

Even Zucker knows it.

"I think every track has to be concerned that it would come from them," Zucker said Sunday while driver Jimmie Johnson, from the nearby San Diego area, was in the process of winning a highly entertaining race at the facility she runs. "And I will be out there kicking and screaming, fighting and scratching, to keep our two dates. I know what we bring to the economy of California. It's something that we're proud of, and it's something that this state needs.

"And I also believe there is a big opportunity for NASCAR here. There are a lot of fans out there. We just need to keep delivering a great product out on that race track." (Continued)