Once a curiosity, Infineon Raceway has become an important stop on the Sprint Cup tour

Twenty years ago, the day before the first NASCAR Cup Series race at what was then called Sears Point Raceway, there could have been a conversation like this between drivers Dale Earnhart and Richard Petty:

Earnhardt: ?Wow, this is different. Blind turns, hills and, geez, I don?t think I?ve ever used the brake this much.?

Petty: ?There?s going to be some banging out there. Three wide? I don?t think we can even go two wide. And what?s with Turn 11? If we go any slower, we?re going to have to restart the cars.?

From the beginning of Cup races at Infineon in 1989, there have been racers who like the uniqueness of a road course and the changes in race car dynamics it presents, and those who prefer to just look ahead to the next race on an oval.

Once, when asked what he thought of the Infineon course, racer Jimmy Spencer said he?d like it more if it were blown up.

When NASCAR decided to hold a Cup race at Infineon, a road course in California wasn?t a foreign idea. Infineon actually replaced a road course in Riverside, one that held NASCAR races for 35 years, until 1988. That?s according to Ken Clapp, who once headed West Coast operations for NASCAR and now is a consultant for the organization.

Riverside did have a back straightaway that was nearly a mile long, where racers could reach speeds of nearly 190 mph.

The Infineon course is less about speed and more about driving smoothly through a funhouse of turns, dips and slanted corners.

Clapp said NASCAR never intended to move out of California when Riverside closed, and was looking forward to jumping into the San Francisco Bay Area market. At the time, that market was the fifth largest in the country.

It was a natural transition to switch to Sears Point, which was hardly the ultra-modern, NASCAR team- and fan-friendly facility it is today.

There wasn?t much surrounding the track but the Sonoma hills. Fans for those early NASCAR races would sit on blankets on the hillsides, the higher up the better vantage point. The Cup race drew 53,000 spectators to Sears Point in 1989. Three years ago, the race crowd at Infineon was estimated at 102,000.

The modernization of the track, with more than $100 million of upgrades that included grandstand seating, new garages and the moving of massive amounts of dirt, was completed in 2002.

Until then, NASCAR?s best had to figure out for themselves how to drive a 3,500-pound car up and down a hilly course with left and right turns and little room for error.

?When I first drove there, I had a blast,? said retired Cup driver Rusty Wallace, now a racing commentator.

Wallace was in the field for the Banquet Frozen Foods 300, the name of the first NASCAR race in Sonoma on June 11, 1989.

The final four laps of the race featured an exciting battle between eventual winner Ricky Rudd and Wallace, the runnerup. Then, like now, a two-car duel at the end included plenty of door and backend banging.

Wallace won the next year, following a pace car under caution. In 1996, he passed Jeff Gordon late to win for a second time at the raceway.

Wallace, who trained for road racing at the old Bob Bondurant School of High Performance Driving at Sears Point, also raced and won at Riverside, including the final race held there in 1988. He said there were NASCAR regulars who didn?t like road course racing, but he wasn?t one of them.

?A lot of guys ran good back then. Dale (Earnhardt) got to be a real good road course racer. I remember for some guys it was just a pain in the ass. They would just run their short-track cars and wouldn?t even bother getting a road course car.?

Wallace doesn?t remember a lot of the early races, because he liked the visit to Sonoma County just as much as the actual racing.

?It?s just a fantastic place,? he said. ?Everyone loves going to Sonoma. It?s where you had to bring your wife and family. We?d go to the piers in San Francisco and I?d even play golf. Now, I don?t think there?s a driver who doesn?t look forward to going to Sonoma.?

Hershel McGriff, the 81-year-old who raced Saturday in the Bennett Lane Winery 200, also competed in the first Cup race at Infineon in 1989.

The track was longer then and included some tricky ?S? turns called the carousel at the top of the course. On a track often criticized for not offering enough passing opportunities, the carousel was a place where the more skilled road course racers could improve their standing.

?I really liked that part of the track,? McGriff said. ?The carousel was kind of a sweeping turn to Turn 7. Now it?s straight over the hill, and you come out blind on Turn 3. When they took away the carousel, they took away a chance to pass. I loved that carousel.?

McGriff said some of the current course terrain contrasts sharply with that first race.

?When you come down Turn 7 and go through the S?s, that looks completely different,? McGriff said. ?There used to be a bank of dirt. Now there?s a curb.?

Clapp said there has never really been a time when NASCAR, which has a year-to-year contract with Infineon and all the tracks in the Cup Series, has thought about not racing at Infineon. He said track improvements were expected from the start, and once the facility was modernized and enlarged, there was little question NASCAR would keep returning.

There had been some talk about maybe changing the Infineon race date so it could become part of the 10-race Chase at the end of the season, but Clapp said that probably won?t happen because changing one date would obviously affect other tracks. And many of the Southern fans still consider road courses somewhat gimmicky.

Clapp said the move to Sears Point was a stroke of good luck. When it was known that Riverside was going to close, Bill France Jr. and NASCAR were thinking of moving the Cup race to the San Jose Fairgrounds Speedway, a mile-long dirt-track oval that would have been paved.

But San Jose politicians dragged their feet, Clapp said, and Glen Long, the president of Sears Point, asked for and received a meeting with France at Daytona early in 1988.

With Clapp agreeing that a Cup race could be held at Sears Point, France Jr. gave his OK. The following year, Sonoma became a Cup Series venue.

Rudd won $62,000 for capturing the first Cup race in 1989. This year?s winner will take home more than $300,000, and the last-place finisher should receive around $70,000.

Other drivers in that first race included Bill Elliott, Dale Jarrett, Sterling Marlin, Darrell Waltrip, Ken Schroeder, Mark Martin, Dick Trickle, Ernie Irvan, Hut Stricklin, Terry Labonte, Harry Gant, Neil Bonnett, Michael Waltrip, Davey Allison, Morgan Shepherd and Lake Speed.

Wallace got excited just by recounting his battle with Rudd at the end of the first race: ?First in Turn 7 and then Turn 11, Ricky got into me and tried to take me out. I remember it was a blast!?

Besides being more numerous than their predecessors in 1989, fans at today?s race will have better vantage points. With the removal of hills and great mounds of dirt, some of the terrace seats going up the hill and on the backside offer views of the entire track.

Add to that an in-person race experience, headset rental and a television screen offered by Sprint, as well as receiving all sorts of live reports from drivers and crew chiefs and data on the race, and the true racing fan isn?t that far from sitting next to Jeff Gordon or Tony Stewart during the race.

?I can remember having a good dinner at a nice restaurant in the wine country, having some wine and the next day I was sitting on the pole,? Wallace said fondly.

?I really wished they raced there two times a year.?

You can reach Staff Writer Rich Rupprecht at 521-5275 or rich.rupprecht@pressdemocrat.com.