Ryan Blaney wants to keep his eyes on the road as NASCAR returns to Southern California with a race through the bone-jarring streets of San Diego’s Coronado Island.
Yet the Team Penske driver is worried about being distracted Sunday as his No. 12 Ford barrels toward the third turn with the USS Carl Vinson directly in its path.
“I hope I’m paying more attention to the corner and not the carrier when I brake into that corner,” Blaney said with a laugh. “We’ll see. It’d be a heck of a way to go.”
There will be a dive team on hand in the highly unlikely scenario that a car lands in the water, but the 16-turn, 3.4-mile layout at Naval Base Coronado will already make a splash in many other ways.
It’s just the second street course in the 77-year history of the top-tier Cup Series and the first that NASCAR will hold on a military installation. Amazon Prime Video will broadcast the race from the USS Vinson, putting its studio set on the deck and its announcing booth in the bridge of the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier.