U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth will travel Saturday to San Diego and be the honorary starter at this weekend’s NASCAR event at Naval Base Coronado, the Department of Defense announced Friday.
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The three-day “Race the Base” event, which will feature the first-ever Cup Series race held in San Diego County, is being presented as the NASCAR community’s celebration of the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Navy.
The Navy, as well as the U.S. Marine Corps, celebrated its 250th anniversary last October. Hegseth and Vice President JD Vance were also in San Diego County at that time to observe an amphibious assault demonstration on Camp Pendleton.
It was not immediately known how Hegseth’s presence would affect traffic and attendance issues, which are already expected to be complicated given Coronado has just two access points and given the race is the first ever to be held on an active Navy base, which is already operating under enhanced security measures.
Earlier this week, officials from the Navy base and the city held a joint news conference urging attendees to arrive early and expect delays both before and after Saturday’s and Sunday’s races. To encourage early arrivals, event officials are giving away gifts to the first 10,000 spectators on both Saturday and Sunday.
Approximately 50,000 tickets have been sold to the public for the featured Saturday and Sunday programs. An O’Reilly Auto Parts series race starts at 2 p.m. Saturday. The main event, the Anduril 250, a NASCAR Cup Series Race, begins at 1 p.m. Sunday.
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Hegseth has visited the San Diego area at least once while in office. Last October, he and Vance attended a massive military demonstration that included live fire and an amphibious assault at Camp Pendleton to celebrate 250 years of both the Navy and Marine Corps.
That visit was marked with controversy when Gov. Gavin Newsom, after consulting with traffic safety experts at the California Highway Patrol, temporarily closed a large section of Interstate 5 that runs through Camp Pendleton over concerns about live artillery being fired over the freeway.
During the demonstration, an artillery round prematurely detonated, dropping shrapnel onto a CHP vehicle that was part of Vance’s security detail, according to the CHP.
The announcement that Hegseth will travel to San Diego comes a day after senators from both parties sought to block his travel funds until the Pentagon submits several overdue reports about civilian harm in Iran to lawmakers. Included in those reports is the Pentagon’s investigation into a deadly strike on an Iranian elementary school that killed more than 165 people, most of them young girls, at the start of the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran. The U.S. is believed to be responsible for the strike.
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