‘Feels like coming home’: NASCAR returns to Sonoma

SONOMA — For the first time in two years, NASCAR is coming to Sonoma Raceway. Which means that for the first time in two years, Captain Ron’s Bar was serving up cold drinks Thursday, in the grassy, wind-scoured lot known as 50 Acres Campground, just across the road from the track.

Chris Paulsen had not yet donned his pirate outfit, an elaborate costume that features a wooden leg. (Not a replica peg leg, mind you, but a real one; Paulsen lost his left leg when a Navy fighter jet ran over his foot on an aircraft carrier three decades ago.) But the sleek bar was assembled, the skeletons propped up, the Jolly Roger flag flying upside down to signify affiliation with a NASCAR fan group that calls itself the Infield Speedway Crazies.

“I only see these guys once a year,” Paulsen said, gesturing at his fellow campers. “So to have to go two years without seeing them, it’s really, really, really missed. Not having it last year, it really was tough on us.”

NASCAR’s absence from Sonoma County was hard on a lot of people. Diehard stock car fans had their hopes dashed in 2020 and their emotions toyed with in the early months of 2021. Local hotels and restaurants went without an event that typically brings tens of millions of dollars into the county. And it has been close to two years since the raceway hosted a major spectator race.

The drought will end this weekend, though, culminating with Sunday’s Toyota/Save Mart 350. It is expected to draw somewhere around 15,500 people, the biggest Bay Area sports crowd since before the coronavirus pandemic struck in March 2020.

“It was just this pent-up demand and enthusiasm,” said Jill Gregory, who is overseeing her first race since becoming Sonoma Raceway executive vice president and general manager in February. “They haven’t had NASCAR here in 714 days, for those of you counting. NASCAR fans are very passionate. They miss the drivers, they miss the excitement, the sounds.”

It was a pretty quiet start here, though. The line of RVs streaming into the campground seemed pretty normal. But with ancillary events starting late this year, the hubbub was minimal Thursday.

In a typical year, the haulers pulling the NASCAR vehicles would have assembled for a parade in Sacramento on Thursday morning, convoyed to the Carneros wetlands and pulled into Sonoma Raceway around 2 p.m. that day.

The trucks would have lined up like sentinels across from the garage area, and the garage itself would have begun to buzz with activity.

Thursday afternoon, the only people in the garage were Bridget Burgess, a 19-year-old driver in the ARCA Menards West Series (sort of the NASCAR minor leagues), and her father/crew chief, Adam. They were tinkering with her No. 88 car.

Burgess and her rivals will run the ARCA race Saturday, after which a sanitation crew will sweep through and disinfect the garage, making it safe for the NASCAR teams. Those crews won’t arrive until late Saturday afternoon.

The sport’s celebrities, drivers like Denny Hamlin, Joey Logano and Kevin Harvick, will drop in Sunday morning, trade paint on the twisting road course and get out before the sun goes down.

The racing should look much the same in 2021, but many details of the race experience will be altered. All tickets are strictly digital; fans will have to display them on their phones for entry. Transactions within the facility, from barbecue to licensed apparel, will be card-only. Fans can bring food and beverages, as always, but must pack it into a transparent bag.

And the roar of the crowd will be less uproarious.

Stuck in the orange tier for weeks now, Sonoma County is limiting outdoor events to 33% of capacity. For Sonoma Raceway, that translates to no more than 15,667 people. The facility had trouble even reaching that figure, due to 6-foot social-distancing requirements. To get there, it has added a small section of seating at the first turn, never before used for a NASCAR race.

Leery of showing bald patches of empty seats to a national TV audience, organizers are selling cardboard cutouts, with proceeds donated to Speedway Children’s Charities.

Gregory and her staff couldn’t assign seats to actual people until they had devised the configuration. The delay necessitated a lot of late-game communication between the ticket-sales team and customers.

Asked when Sonoma Raceway finalized seat assignments, Gregory looked at her watch.

“What time is it now?” she replied.

This weekend’s race will be the last one on the NASCAR schedule to require COVID-19 safety restrictions, Gregory said.

The Toyota/Save Mart 350 generally falls on Father’s Day. Moving up the event two weeks on the calendar might have cost the raceway big money. Father’s Day will come after June 15, the boldfaced, circled-in-red date on which the state of California plans to drop most social-distancing requirements.

Asked whether she feels a twinge of frustration at the timing, Gregory said, “No question. We have all looked at the calendar.”

At some point, raceway staff had to decide whether to hold back and wait to see if Sonoma County could advance to the yellow tier, or to plow forward with logistics. “Once we kind of put the stake in the ground and knew it would stay how it is today, we accepted that,” Gregory said.

There are some restrictions in 50 Acres Campground, too. There’s no “horseshoe camping” allowed; RVs in the same cluster are supposed to face the same direction, rather than forming central common spaces. Fans are asked to stay within their pods, and to mask up when walking between campsites.

Thursday, enforcement of those rules was pretty much nonexistent.

None of the campers seemed a bit worried. In fact, most were thrilled to be back at an activity that has become a rite of summer.

“To have this feels like coming home,” said Deanna Desin, a Novato resident, who figures she has camped out for NASCAR a dozen times.

One of her camp mates, Rob Trites of Fairfield, added: “It’s one of the things I look forward to every year.”

A couple hours later, Trites and his friend Aysha Peralta found themselves at Captain Ron’s Bar. Everyone here eventually does, it seems.

Chris Paulsen offered them an icy, pinkish drink concocted of vodka, rum and fruit juices, and Trites happily accepted.

“Now that we’re here, it’s a blast,” Paulsen said, his high-tech prosthetic leg more than sturdy enough to support his massive tumbler of pirate juice. “It’s like old times.”

You can reach Phil Barber at 707-521-5263 or phil.barber@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @Skinny_Post.