motorsports

Given that personal connection, this will be far from a lost weekend for Hull no matter how Sunday’s race ends since his driver is scheduled to be inducted in the Long Beach Motorsports Walk of Fame on Thursday.

Meanwhile Huddleston, who squeezed a few final seasons out of the Irwindale track, is moving to Bakersfield, where he has teamed with Harvick, a Bakersfield native, to refurbish the former Kern County Raceway Park as Kevin Harvick’s Kern Raceway, a 120-acre motorsports facility with a half-mile asphalt oval and a one-third-mile dirt one.

The support of the NHRA, the first U.S. motorsports series to welcome female drivers in large numbers — women have won 23 drag-racing championships, dating to Shirley Muldowney’s top fuel title in 1977 — was especially helpful, Shumake said.

That leaves the Grand Prix of Long Beach as the only major motorsports event in a region that once hosted dozens of racing series each year.

Roger Penske didn’t invent motorsports.