Anyone know anything? All the tenants have to be out by today. Anyone know the buyers plans for the facility?
Willow Springs Raceway Has Been Sold
Anyone know anything? All the tenants have to be out by today. Anyone know the buyers plans for the facility?
Wow.. I thought I saw someone racing there yesterday on YT.. maybe it was a leftover from previous event.
Steve, FV80
Racing since '73 - FV since '77
Booting out the tenants sounds pretty ominous. You just buy something and then cutoff the revenue being generated. This doesn't sound good. I can't believe there is any population encroaching on that area, its practically in the middle of nowhere.
CrossHarbor Capital Partners, probably don't need the revenue.
The rumor is that it will become a private club track like Thermal.
I could see that for the big track but they have more than that. (2 other tracks, roundys (dirt and asphalt I believe), etc.
They are honoring all existing bookings.
Last I remember there are only a few vendors there and the tire shop has a not great rep.
I doubt it'll become housing. Land is too cheap around there to buy a track for housing and it's not a prime location for housing.
The facilities are old and hodge-podge. Maybe this is a good thing. Maybe they will pick the rocks off the sides of the track.Originally Posted by R. Pare
An off there was almost always certain damage.
July and August are certainly hell out there. I went out there once during the summer and it's not good.
I did streets in the old dodge-powered skip barber cars once, it was 115 degrees and the cars kept vapor locking. Then you gotta sit in a hot racecar that won't start with no airflow wearing all your gear and wait for a flat tow to come get you.
Edit: Oh yeah almost forgot. I also spent about 7 hours waiting at their tiny airport on the way out because the jet was having engine heat issues too.
Last edited by Spengo; 03.31.25 at 12:16 PM.
I am not sure that the track / area has the qualities needed for a private / club type experience - too much land to maintain - for space available to develop as residential.
Most country club tracks are better built from the ground up to maximize space which can be sold for real estate.
Willow springs does stay quite busy with rentals / film / TV. All say that the facilities could use updating. A Cross Harbor focuses on commercial real estate and likely knows how to do renovations. They probably want to select new vendors for their new facilities.
Yes rental is likely to go up but improvements are not free.
The point is that the family wanted out - so this may be the best option.
Lets wait an see what develops over the next 6 months before any conclusions are drawn.
Mark Silverberg - SE Michigan
Lynx B FV & Royale RP3 FF
240Z Vintage Production Car
PCR, Kosmic CRG & Birel karts
I’m going to a Track Day there on May 21 with Open Track Racing. I hope they stay open until then.
What are you running?
I used to run a corvette with them (2008-2014). Then a lot of the corvette guys bought vipers.
My PFM.
There’s was one other guy also with a PFM, but mostly there are corvettes and Porsche GT3’s. It feels great keeping up with a $200,000 GT3 in my little PFM. They pull me on the straights and I catch them in the turns.
I’m not much of a driver and I use old tires but I have a great time there. Kailo is a lot of fun to be around. His Driver meetings are harsh lol. I was told to keep my mouth shut by someone, unless I wanted to get made fun of. I’m glad I did, it was fun watching him bagging on everyone. All done with good humor though.
Last time I was there I got a ride in one of his Instructors Radicals. Damn that was fast and he could drive. I was too busy hanging on to look what the speed was in 7 and 8.
It's one of the best track day groups because they run mid-week. Fewer d-bags. They've been doing it for a long-long time.
https://www.thedrive.com/news/sold-s...prings-raceway All seems well.
All we can do is wait and see.
Also:
https://racer.com/2025/04/09/new-own...illow-springs/
Last edited by BeerBudgetRacing; 04.09.25 at 3:34 PM.
Agree about wait and see. Here is Racer's take.
https://racer.com/2025/04/09/new-own...illow-springs/
“Racing makes heroin addiction look like a vague wish for something salty.” -Peter Egan
Its hilarious to read some of the comments at the bottom of that article.
What concerns me is this sudden focus on "safety". Despite being the fastest road course in the US, Big Willow is pretty safe. Perhaps its biggest safety feature is the ****ty runoff (of which there are massive amounts) which encourages drivers to stay on the black stuff. Formula cars and sports racers really need to pay attention to this. Going off often results in many pounds of gravel finding its way into every crevice, as well as the potential for significant bottom damage.
Although I have a friend that would like to see a couple of turns put in between 6 and 8 (he has a 1300cc Datsun and finds the track boring) the last thing I want to see is this great track emasculated. After losing Cal Speedway, its one of the last places where you can really go seriously fast. You could create an alternative section from the exit of 5 down through the infield to re-enter somewhere in 8, but I don't think the topography allows for anything more than that.
There are two obvious safety problems which I could see would be of concern to people that bring high HP street cars to Big Willow. The first is if you are a moron like a certain AS racer in a Mustang that went straight off at the entry to 9 with no brakes and refused to turn the car. Then you get launched several feet in the air and punch a cinder block wall. That guy went 800 ft without changing his trajectory. The access road and its wall, are pretty easily moved farther back. Although FCs go through there between 120 and 135, big iron can easily hit 160 at the entry to 9, with a lot more momentum. A friend of mine lost a wheel in 9 and it hopped the wall and stopped just short of Rosamond Blvd, a little over a quarter of a mile.
The second is the exit of 9, where if you pinch it too much the resultant spin will send you into the infield, and often times a correction will send you back across the track into traffic. A wide exit has you pointing at the end of the pit wall, a late spin can put you down pit lane. There's a lot of room available for pit re-configuration.
There's a little less of a concern regarding T3. It's heavily banked, steeply uphill, and a spin there almost always brings the car back onto the racing surface. I had an S2 spin in front of me there and I literally had no place to go because of traffic on both sides. I looked like I was going to center punch him but due to the steep hill, I got it stopped. Then there was a looooong time waiting for him to re-fire and get out of the way, and then trying to get myself going again up that hill. That made the clutch cry.
The overall safety problem plagues all desert tracks. Rain, when it comes, is often torrential. Even governments don't want to invest in drainage for these once-a-year events, and just live with the maintenance consequences. Water flows along the edge of the asphalt, scouring out a ditch until it either finds a way to cross or a channel to a lower spot. Less of a problem in places that have grass, because the plants anchor the soil. But unless you've planned in some kind of french drain system, you're faced with repairing the track edges every time it rains. Otherwise, you get nasty drop-offs that destroy sidewalls and break formula cars. At VARA's race a couple of weekends back, we actually had two sedans break front suspension from offs. That's been Willow since forever.
Willow has plenty of runoff, but you don't want to use it. Its mostly golf-ball or larger sized rock. A thoughtful owner could put a 100' strip of really fine rock (called road base out here, its really decomposed granite) - smaller than pea gravel so it won't get stuck in a caliper and lathe the rim in half but larger than sand. The alkaline nature of the soil makes this easy to pack down with a roller almost to asphalt hardness. Then perhaps several feet of pea until you get to the big stuff where hopefully nobody ventures. There are three massive DG quarries within a few miles of the track, but they could easily build one on site and crush their own.
The biggest problem with Willow was the Huth's chasing every bit of revenue they could - that brought so many facilities that they could not maintain them at all. The Mile, the asphalt oval, and the balcony are all used for drift events. Do they really need three? The dirt oval seems unused, all of SoCal dirt racing is at Perris and Ventura. 30 years ago there was dirt oval racing in Pearsonville, Antelope Valley Fairgrounds, and Victor Valley Fairgrounds, as well as WS, but those days seem to be gone. The streets was needed for track days and schools, because for cars without safety equipment, Big Willow is perhaps too fast.
For club racing the facility is only useable from late September through early May because its just too damn hot. We had a very low entry fee race there in June once - when I rolled off the grid it was 105.
willow springs
three things you can never change too heat, too cold , too windy.
stopped running there 20 plus years ago
W S RIP
My thoughts:
- You can't fix stupid. Parking lots are dangerous for some people.
- A rock picker and a road roller will go a long way to improving track safety. Get some kid on a rock picker out there every evening for a month and it'll improve 100x.
- There are some mounds and ditches that can be leveled (T1-T2 area iir).
- The pits and buildings need 're-planning'. The whole thing was sort of hodge-podge.
- It could actually be one of the better spectator viewing tracks around. Sans part of T2 you can actually see almost everything if you have a little elevation. The last time I was there the bleachers were a bit dangerous.
I've got lots of ideas if they have the money!
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