NASCAR To Race At San Diego U.S. Navy Base In 2026, Report Says

Pete “Maverick” Mitchell did have a need for speed.

NASCAR is set to announce it is holding a race at the Naval Air Station North Island in San Diego next July, Racer reports.

The outlet said that a formal announcement will be made on Wednesday and that the event will replace the Chicago Street Race, which will not be held in 2026.

The U.S Navy base was featured in the Tom Cruise movies “Top Gun” and “Top Gun: Maverick,” and formerly hosted the Coronado Festival of Speed historic racing on a track set up on the base’s airfield from 1997 through 2016.

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NASCAR has not commented on the report, which did not indicate if the track is being designed as a street course with left and right turns or a temporary oval.

According to the Nascarman X account, NASCAR has previously four races on airport tracks in 1854, 1956, 1957 and 1960, the last at the Orange County Airport in Montgomery, N.Y.

NASCAR has not held a points-paying Cup Series race in Southern California since Auto Club Speedway in Fontana was closed in 2023. Plans to turn the now demolished two-mile oval in to a half-mile oval have not yet come to fruition.

A San Diego race presents an interesting marketing opportunity for NASCAR as, not only was it a “Top Gun” location, but the film’s star Tom Cruise is currently developing a sequel to his stock car racing film “Days of Thunder,” so the promotional tie-ins seem endless.

If the San Diego race takes Chicago’s Fourth of July weekend slot on the calendar, it will coincide with the America250 celebrations for the USA’s Semiquincentennial.