Buttonwillow Raceway 25A CCW
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 25A CCW configuration at Buttonwillow Raceway represents a specific counterclockwise layout variant at California's technical Kern County facility, creating a unique combination of the track's modular sections designated by the 25A nomenclature. Running counterclockwise reverses the standard flow through this particular configuration, transforming braking references and apex sighting across corners that drivers typically approach from the opposite direction. This variant serves Buttonwillow's diverse track day and club racing clientele seeking variety across the facility's numerous configuration options.
Operating the 25A CCW showcases Buttonwillow's exceptional layout flexibility where different turn combinations create dozens of possible configurations, earning it reputation as California's most versatile road course facility. Central Valley's climate creates extreme seasonal variations with summer track temperatures routinely exceeding 60C while winter sessions can operate in near-freezing morning conditions. The counterclockwise 25A variant provides fresh mental challenges for regular Buttonwillow users who've mastered standard clockwise configurations, allowing the facility to offer new experiences even to drivers with hundreds of laps across the property.
