Track Profile: Getting To Know Phoenix Raceway
Track Profile: Getting To Know Phoenix Raceway
The ARCA Menards Series heads to the one-mile Phoenix Raceway for the General Tire 150, March 11th at 7:30 p.m. ET.
The ARCA Menards Series is still relatively new to Phoenix Raceway, as only a few races at the one-mile paved tri-oval in Avondale, Arizona, have run under the ARCA Menards banner.
Yet the West Series, which now operates as the ARCA Menards Series West, has a long history at the D-shaped track in the desert.
The General Tire 150 at Phoenix Raceway in March of 2022 awards points to both the ARCA Menards Series and the ARCA Menards Series West for the second time in the track’s history. It is the only ARCA Menards Series-West Series combination race on the 2022 schedule.
ARCA’s return in November is a West Series standalone race, serving as the series’ championship event. But the field figures to be stacked with ARCA Menards Series regulars, anyway.
Tough competition from rival drivers aside, Phoenix Raceway features a layout and configuration seen nowhere else in stock car racing.
TRACK PROFILE: PHOENIX RACEWAY
| Track | Phoenix Raceway |
| Location | Avondale, Arizona |
| Opened | 1964 |
| Layout | Tri-oval |
| Surface | Asphalt |
| Length | One mile |
| Banking | (Variable) 8-9 degrees in Turns 1-2; 0-11 degrees in Frontstretch Dogleg; 10-11 degrees in Turns 3-4; 9 degrees on Frontstretch; 3 degrees on Backstretch |
A local builder and amateur sports car racer, Richard Hogue designed Phoenix Raceway to include the traditional one-mile oval as well as a quarter-mile drag strip and a 2.5 mile road course.
Construction of the facility Hogue called the “Indianapolis of the West” was completed in 1964, a month before Davey MacDonald won the first race at Phoenix Raceway, an open sports car race on the track’s road course. A month later, A.J. Foyt won the track’s first oval race, a 100-mile USAC event.
The first race at Phoenix for what’s now the ARCA Menards Series West, then the NASCAR Winston West Series, was won by Cale Yarborough on Nov. 27, 1977. The track would host its first NASCAR Cup Series race almost 11 years later, when Alan Kulwicki won on Nov. 6, 1988 in front of a then-record crowd of 60,000.
The ARCA Menards Series’ first event at Phoenix Raceway came in 2020 after the series merged with NASCAR. Chandler Smith won the General Tire 150 for the ARCA Menards Series in March of that year, and that November, David Gilliland won the first West Series race under the ARCA Menards banner at Phoenix.
That race also served as the ARCA Menards Series West season finale; Jesse Love was crowned champion. He repeated as champion in 2022 after Ty Gibbs won the West Series race at Phoenix to close the ARCA Menards racing season.
Phoenix Raceway has gone through a series of changes over almost six decades. Dennis Wood sold the track to Emmett Jobe in 1985. The venue was reconstructed in 1987 after a lightning strike started a fire that burned most of the structure. A suite building outside what was then Turn 1 was added in 1988. In 1991, the infield road course was reconfigured.
International Speedway Corporation purchased the track from Jobe in 1997. Lights were installed in 2004. The track’s Bobby Allison Grandstand was expanded in 2005, and the track oval’s surface was repaved and reconfigured in 2011.
In 2017, ISC and Phoenix Raceway announced a $178 million modernization plan for the track, and the project that featured more reconfiguration was completed in time for the 2018 NASCAR Cup Series race on Nov. 11, 2018.