Sonoma Raceway president Steve Page announces retirement
Steve Page is readying himself for his final lap.
After running Sonoma Raceway for 29 years, Page announced Thursday he will retire at year’s end from the venue that hosts Sonoma County’s largest sporting event each year.
As the 1,600-acre road course and drag strip girds for the next chapter of coronavirus impacts on big-league spectator sports, Page said this feels like the right time for him to step aside.
In May, the pandemic forced the cancelation of the Toyota/Save Mart 350 NASCAR race for the first time since it debuted at the track in 1989. Apprehension about large, public events during the pandemic, coupled with widespread public satisfaction with watching events such as NASCAR races at home, “is really going to require a reinvention of the way we do a lot of things,” Page said.
Page, 66, said he ’s proud of the vast improvements he and his team brought to the track complex at Sears Point, and he’ll remain active in community work in Sonoma County as his successor guides Sonoma Raceway into its next era.
When Page came in 1991 to what was then the Sears Point Raceway, he’d worked 11 years in the head office of the Oakland A’s and knew precious little about auto racing. The race track, then owned by Skip Berg, was an eyesore that earned little affection from North Bay residents.
Pointing to an aerial photograph high on a wall of his office above the 2.52-mile paved track, Page said, “When I came here, it looked like that.”
The old metal-and-wood bleachers were rickety and there little internal infrastructure to get race-day traffic off adjacent Highways 37 and 121, nor provide for the comfort or convenience of drivers, crew members and fans.
“It was a mess,” said Page, who noted that he oftens looks up at that old photo, then turns to the bank of windows overlooking the 12-turn track. “I see that we’ve made some progress here,” he said.
Home to NASCAR races and National Hot Rod Association drags and a growing number of corporate, amateur racing and community events, Sonoma Raceway today boasts both grandstand and amphitheater-style seating, guest suites, gateway lanes for moving cars off the highways, a three-quarter mile go-cart track, a neighboring industrial park and myriad attractions for drivers and fans.
Page has no intention of ever leaving the home in Sonoma Valley he shares with his wife Judy. He is proud that over the past three decades the raceway has become far more than “a cause of inconvenience a few days a year, and not much else.”
Page grew up in Monterey and as a high school student worked a job parking spectators’ cars at Laguna Seca Raceway. He took little notice of what happened on the track.
“In retrospect,” said the easy-going, wavy haired 1972 graduate of Monterey High, “I saw some pretty incredible things.” Among them, the Can-Am exploits of the likes of Bruce McLaren, Sam Posey and Jim Hall.
Page studied at UC Berkeley, then went to Washington, D.C., as press secretary to Leon Panetta, the Monterey-born congressman who went on to serve as secretary of defense, CIA director and White House chief of staff.
Venturing into the realm of professional sports, Page at one point interviewed with George W. Bush for a job with the Texas Rangers. Page was 26 when he joined the marketing and special events staff of the Oakland A’s. He was chief coordinator of the 1987 MLB All-Star Games
He tells of coming away from the A’s profoundly influenced by the commitment of then-owner Walter Haas to make the team’s Oakland stadium not just a place to sell tickets and beer, but a genuine and vital East Bay community asset.
That inspiration served Page well in 1990, when he went to work transforming the race track, built in 1968 over a dairy farm in a bowl in the hills that fall off into San Pablo Bay. For years, Page and his wife had loved visiting Sonoma County and he seized the job at the raceway as cause to move there.
As he built up and refined Sonoma Raceway, Page made it deeply involved in community programs and philanthropy. Under his leadership, the regional chapter of Speedway Children’s Charities has since 2001 contributed more than $6.8 million to local nonprofits that serve youth.
Page assumed leadership roles with a host of community organizations and at present chairs the boards of the Santa Rosa Junior College Foundation and the North Bay Leadership Council. He is active also on advisory boards of Social Advocates for Youth and 10,000 Degrees Sonoma County.
Marcus Smith, chief of Speedway Motorsports, the North Carolina firm that owns the raceway, described Page in a written statement as “an exceptional leader” who not only has been integral to many historic races but has “established the facility as a true servant to the community and elevated Sonoma Raceway’s status as a premier motorsports destination for both competition and doing business.”
As he prepares to retire on the last day of the year, Page pledges to remain active in the community, and he intends to stay in his Sonoma home until he’s carried out of it.
What will he do in retirement? Having briefly toyed with learning to play the trombone, Page said he and Judy would like to do more traveling.
And there’s a 1987 Porsche in his garage that he’d like to start up and see where it might like to go.
You can contact Chris Smith at 707-521-5211 and chris.smith@pressdemocrat.com.
