NASCAR's first foray onto an active military base produced exactly the kind of unpredictability a brand-new street course invites. The 3.4-mile temporary circuit laid out across the roads of Naval Base Coronado threw up a loose manhole cover, a safety truck travelling the wrong way and a crash-strewn overtime finish before the Cup Series had even turned a competitive lap.
The first sign of trouble came in Saturday's O'Reilly Auto Parts Series race, which barely lasted a lap before a manhole cover wedged itself into the front splitter of Corey Day's #17 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet. "What was on the back straight I ran over? It looked like a manhole cover," Day radioed before limping back to pit lane.
Repairs forced a lengthy stoppage, and Day's afternoon only got stranger. Rejoining the track, he came upon a safety truck heading the wrong way. "Please let me know if there are any more safety trucks driving backwards on the track," he said. Broadcaster Parker Kligerman captured the near-miss: "Oh my goodness. Wow. Good reaction by the safety truck."
The chaos had begun a day earlier. Layne Riggs survived a crash-filled overtime finish to win Friday's inaugural Navy 250 Truck race, leading 21 laps in his #34 Front Row Motorsports Ford and holding off Daniel Hemric after several frontrunners tangled at Turn 1. Kaz Grala took third for Toyota.
For the drivers, the base setting made for one of the season's stranger weekends. 23XI Racing's Tyler Reddick, whose entries carried San Diego Zoo livery, leaned into the change of pace. "Sometimes it's fun to not talk about the racing side of things as much and just kind of talk about some cool special opportunities we get to do as race car drivers," he said. Team-mate Corey Heim came away from a visit with a cheetah rattled by one fact — that the animal reaches 60 mph quicker than a Cup car. "I was shocked to hear that it was, what did they say, 3 seconds? I mean, that's unbelievable," Heim said.
Kligerman pinpointed the core challenge of the layout: hemmed in by walls and fencing, drivers sitting low in the car "can't see around any of these corners." On a circuit unlike anything else on the calendar, the racing has matched the setting — unfamiliar, hazardous and, so far, anything but dull.
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*Originally published on [Motorsports Global](https://motorsports.global/article/nascars-san-diego-naval-base-debut-erupts-into-chaos). Visit for full coverage.*