Buttonwillow Raceway Park is a multipurpose Motorsport facility, home to the California Region of the Sports Car Club of America. It's been in operation since 1996 at the town of Buttonwillow, a 30-min drive away from Bakersfield, CA. The club members use the complex to develop their high-performance racing skills on track days open for aspiring racecar drivers. Buttonwillow Raceway Park also hosts regular go-kart competitions and serves as a road testing ground for car manufacturers. The raceway's location in the arid San Joaquin Valley offers good climate conditions year-round, although it may get quite hot in summer. You can bet on the track surface to remain dry, as it rains very little in Buttonwillow, usually in wintertime.
There are three track layouts in Buttonwillow Raceway Park: the 1.86-mile West Loop, the 1.06-mile East loop, and the 3.1-mile combined configuration. These are customizable in 40+ different ways for hosting varied competitions simultaneously. There is also a separate kart track of 0.69 miles and a 250′ x 255′ skidpad. The main straightaway has 3,800 feet and serves as a test drag strip when it's not a part of a race layout. Some turns have negative banking, and others have up to 10% positive banking, and many of them are blind corners because of the frequent elevation changes through the whole race track.
Buttonwillow 18CCW is a 2.89-mile layout that goes through the main straightaway and flies along Riverside, Dog Leg, and Gravepine, only to start decelerating when reaching Cotton Corners in the East Loop. Interestingly enough, this layout’s average speed (280 mph) is slower than the layouts going through Phil Hill. The average lap time is 2:09.8, also slower than expected when you take such long track segments.
