Buttonwillow Raceway Park

Buttonwillow Raceway Park sits on Lerdo Highway in Kern County, California - according to Wikipedia about ten miles north of the town of Buttonwillow and some 28 miles north-west of Bakersfield. The facility opened in 1995 and is owned and operated by the California Sports Car Club, a region of the SCCA. The surface is asphalt and was repaved in July 2014. The operator states that the East and West loops together make a main track of 3.1 miles, that over 40 different configurations can be run clockwise or counter-clockwise, and that both loops can run at the same time for two separate events. Wikipedia gives the Race #13 clockwise layout as 3.000 miles with 23 turns and Race #14 as 2.640 miles with 21 turns. A new Circuit layout of 2.56 miles, 40 ft wide, opened to the public in January 2025. Open test days are offered on selected Fridays and occasional weekends and are explicitly aimed at experienced drivers and riders. The operator rates Race #13 as the most technical option, while Race #25 with its longer straights is built for racing - so depending on the booked configuration you get tight corner combinations one day and long, fast sweepers the next. Those fast sweepers are what exposes a wrong ride height: if the bike feels vague there and will not run calm, our first address is not the damping but the sag and ride-height balance. Set the sag properly before you start turning clicks.