If you’re any kind of track rat, you probably have a favorite dumpy course. When I was coming up in the hobby, it was Summit Point. Just a couple states west, I had friends who happily drove laps around the many expanding potholes at Nelson Ledges. Hey, at least the latter was cheap; I have no idea what Slummit’s excuse was. Point being, I get it.
So I also understood the implied concerns about what’s coming next for this grungy little corner of the desert. With new management came promises of much-needed improvements. But there’s a reason they’d been neglected for so long: they cost money. Willow’s hole-in-the-wall character wasn’t just charming, it was also cheap, which helped keep it appealing despite its remote location.
The news has been a bit doom-y since then, but now we’re seeing the first fruits of the new ownership’s proverbial labor. Both the Streets of Willow and the facility’s go-kart track have already been completely overhauled. That’s actually under-selling the improvements to the go-kart track; the whole thing has been ripped out and re-paved (see the YouTube video below).
And while the Streets of Willow course wasn’t completely ripped out and replaced, the changes to it were fairly dramatic, as you can see from the above before-and-after shots. While the new curbing is the most obvious visible change from this perspective, anybody familiar with the old configuration will immediately notice that the track no longer goes where it once did.
The most obvious change is to the pit entry/skidpad complex near the end of the course (T13-14, or maybe 15, since no two track maps appear to be alike). The detour onto the skidpad is now longer, and the cut-off is now a single, decreasing-radius turn rather than an s-curve complex. The bus stop style optional chicane between 11 and 12 appears to have been abandoned.
Meanwhile, two new optional chicanes were added between turn 8 and turn 9. This will be appealing to groups looking for novice-friendly configurations that will limit top speeds on the mid-course straight. These appear to have come at a cost, however; there’s no longer a pair of cross-overs connecting the straight to turns 4 and 6. This eliminates the two shorter configurations that were previously available, but if the whole point was to take the straightaway off the table, the new bus stops can accomplish the same thing without dramatically shortening the course.
Over at the go-kart track, the configuration hasn’t changed apart from eliminating a few paved areas that apparently weren’t necessary. The crew ripped out all of the sun-beaten asphalt and replaced it with fresh blacktop. It looks nice and clean—and wide enough to run an autocross on—hey, who wouldn’t want to rip a Miata around a ‘kart course once or twice?
So far, we’ve heard from users that Willow’s new management was able to honor most of their 2025 bookings and pricing, but given the progress we’ve already seen here, we’re expecting prices to creep up starting with next year’s events. But at least you might have a nicer track surface to show for it.
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Byron is a contributing writer and auto reviewer with a keen eye for infrastructure, sales and regulatory stories.
