This weekend's trip out west to the Auto Club Speedway once again brings up the question of this track's worth to the NASCAR schedule. Although the track does not officially release attendance records, Saturday night's race - and plenty before it - featured a number of empty seats around the 2-mile track. Racing is lackluster at best, and as we saw this weekend, is often dominated by one team. Not known for the best racing in the world, the Auto Club Speedway somehow continues to improve its dates on the Cup Series schedule.

Since 2004, the Auto Club Speedway - one of the newer tracks on the circuit - has enjoyed two dates on the Cup Series schedule. In 2005, the speedway was granted two of the best dates on the entire schedule. Starting in '04, teams and drivers began packing up their equipment after almost a month of racing down in Daytona and head out west for the second race of the year. This date - which used to belong to Rockingham Speedway - meant teams had to work overtime just to get to the track and back, something becoming much more difficult considering the current state of the economy.

This February's event at the Auto Club Speedway was a disaster from the get-go. Poor weather threatened the race; however NASCAR and track officials rushed in order to get the event started. After a rain delay and lengthy clean-up, weepers in the track surface began pushing water up through the asphalt and onto the racing surface - resulting in an accident with Casey Mears, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Sam Hornish Jr. Track officials did their best to downplay the weepers in the track and insisted this incident was a fluke; however driver opinion tended to differ.

The second date the Auto Club Speedway has enjoyed since 2004 is the historic Labor Day weekend event. Held at Darlington Raceway for fifty-four years, the Southern 500 was a legend amongst legends, a race that drivers dug down deep to get that extra push needed to capture the win and something every single driver in NASCAR wanted to add to their resume. However, NASCAR didn't see it in the same light. The race was moved to November in 2004, in order to accommodate a second date for Texas Motor Speedway. The next year, the race was gone.

Instead, NASCAR decided the Auto Club Speedway was capable of replacing this legend and carrying on its tradition by starting one of its own. The only problem was the fans and drivers did not embrace it the same way

While NASCAR hoped to attract a Hollywood-type fan base, attendance has never really been all that impressive, and quite frankly neither has the racing. Although drivers enjoy the wide corners and straightaways because it allows for more passes, the field tends to get spread out and racing for the lead is usually done on pit road. This weekend's races saw both Kyle Busch and Jimmie Johnson dominate the Nationwide and Cup Series races. Jimmie Johnson led 228 of 250 laps and beat runner-up Greg Biffle by over two seconds, royally stinking up the show.

Much like the year's first event at the speedway, issues with the track itself were the reason for at least two caution periods. On two different occasions, caution lights around the track fell off the fence and onto the racing surface. NASCAR officials were quick to throw the yellow and retrieve them.

For these reasons, it baffles this writer when NASCAR announces next season the Auto Club Speedway will once again improve one of its Cup Series dates by moving into the Chase. One of the four tracks involved in next year's date swap, the Auto Club Speedway's Labor Day weekend event will go to Atlanta Motor Speedway - another track struggling to fill stands - while the Fontana date moves to October. With a number of issues and one of the toughest markets in the entire nation, it shows in some cases marketing and dollar signs are more important in the world of auto racing than auto racing.