Sunday at Naval Base Corando was about history.
The inaugural, and maybe only Anduril Race the Base 250 was about the history made by the event, its eventual winner and the history that is still to come.
Corey Heim outdueled 23XI Racing teammate Tyler Reddick to earn his first victory at the NASCAR Cup Series level but only after expected favorites Shane Van Gisbergen and Connor Zilisch were wiped out racing for the lead with Austin Hill.
That’s not to take away from the accomplishment, by the way.
Reddick has four NASCAR Cup Series wins on road courses in the NextGen era. He very much comes across like the 1b to SVG’s 1a when it comes to turning left and right with this style of car.
“This gives me a lot of confidence,” Heim said on Motorsport.com and NASCAR’s Inside the Race. “His first win was at Road America, I think. I can relate to him in that manner, I think. It takes a lot. It took a really complete race from me.
“I avoided that big wreck that took out some of the key players. At the end of the day, I kept my head in the game, and to race head-to-head with one of the best and get side-by-side and pass cleanly, that’s a surreal feeling.”
Additional context: Heim, widely considered a top prospect, and will join 23XI full-time next year, went head-to-head with the current championship leader and emerged victorious in a part-time effort.
There will be a lot of talk about the history made this weekend with the event holistically but there is a lot of this outcome that feels similar in stature to Jeff Gordon winning the inaugural Brickyard 400 at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
No one knew for sure in that moment, but a legend was born on August 6, 1994. Denny Hamlin, who is the co-owner of 23XI, certainly didn’t expect this either.
“Really surprised,” he said. “I mean, truthfully really surprised. Now, if you would have asked me in the middle of the race, I wouldn’t have been that surprised. I got to race around him enough to know he had plenty of speed. I knew he was on the right side of the strategy cycle.
“But you still have to go out there and beat some of the best, have enough speed. I saw that margin of victory over second, third was like 10 seconds (back) or something. Evidently him and Tyler set a really fast pace there on that last run.
“But this was not expected by any means. I was very pleasantly surprised.”
NASCAR Chief Operating Officer, Ben Kennedy
Photo by: David Jensen / Getty Images
The same could be said about the entire NASCAR industry about how the Cup Series race played out on Sunday after a messy Friday and Saturday. Pleasantly surprised. Ben Kennedy, the league’s chief operating officer, had a different phrase for it.
Mission accomplished.
It’s one thing to race in Downtown Chicago for the past three years but it was another to contest an event on an active miliary installation, and doing it in a way that created a minimal disruption to active military operations.
What was expected to be a one-off event celebrating the 250th birthday of both the Navy and the United States now has a pathway towards becoming an annual event.
“What we are going to do after this weekend is have a deep dive after-action review with our entire team,” Kennedy said after the race. “We’re going to sit down with the United States Navy and talk about what did we learn, what worked well. …
“I’d like to sit down with them, have a debrief, then have a conversation about is there an opportunity for us to return here.”
But even if NASCAR doesn’t immediately return to NAS North Island, there are always new markets to pursue or a return to Downtown Chicago or Mexico City. The latter didn’t happen this year only due to a conflict with the World Cup, for example.
“If you have any ideas, send them our way,” Kennedy said with a laugh. “We’ll take whatever you got. … We have found a way to create a culture of innovation — we put a lot of energy around it internally at NASCAR and across the industry. That gives us a lot of these different ideas. …
“I can’t take credit for this idea. I can’t take credit for a lot of the work that went into this. But it’s the people at NASCAR that come up with a lot of these ideas. This was the next evolution of that.
“We had the ’21 schedule come out. We went to the first tracks for the first time. ’22 was the next step, went to L.A. Coliseum. We had to build a temporary racetrack. Chicago was probably the boldest evolution of that, building an entirely temporary facility. This is the next iteration.
“We’ve heard a lot of great ideas from folks internally, across the industry. Fans on social media every day have different ideas. Every time we have those ideas, we take them to the pipeline, vet them (and) see if there are any that come to fruition.”
This event was historic because 67 percent of ticket-buyers were first-time race attendees. This weekend saw an 11 percent increase in female attendance over the average NASCAR event. It also attracted fans from all 50 states and 17 countries.
In a perfect world, Kennedy said NASCAR would like to have two of these street course events every year. With 38 overall events, NASCAR used one of them to generate growth for its future.
“I would say the confidence level is high, but all we want to do is win,” Kennedy said. “We want to get better. We want to improve. That’s what the team is focused on for the future, is if we do have our next street course, how do we raise the bar even more.”
That’s one thing Kennedy and Heim had in common this weekend.
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