Buttonwillow Raceway 14CW
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.
The 14CW configuration at Buttonwillow Raceway represents a 2.64-mile clockwise layout utilizing turn combination 14 in the facility's modular naming system at California's technical Kern County road course. The 14 designation creates specific corner sequences and characteristics serving events requiring this particular routing configuration. This variant demonstrates Buttonwillow's reputation as California's most configurable circuit where dozens of systematic turn combinations create nearly unlimited layout possibilities serving year-round track day and racing activities.
Operating the 14CW showcases Buttonwillow's exceptional flexibility where systematic turn numbering allows precise configuration selection matching specific event requirements or participant skill levels. Central Valley's extreme seasonal temperatures create year-round racing potential though summer heat exceeds 60C making early morning and winter sessions preferred for serious track work. The 14CW variant creating average speeds of 79 mph provides specific technical challenges serving the facility's comprehensive track day calendar, allowing Buttonwillow to offer varied experiences matching different event types across the property's exceptional configuration versatility.
