Irwindale Speedway is being dismantled following years of uncertainty.
@danger_media via Instagram
Irwindale Speedway is truly gone now. We anticipated this day would come for Southern California’s iconic House of Drift, yet we held onto a sliver of hope as long as the structure remained intact. That hope is now extinguished, as a video shared on social media Monday morning depicted the demolition of the track’s grandstands and call box.
@danger_media posted the video they captured while driving along Live Oak Avenue. The area that once served as the main seating section was collapsing as excavators pushed it over indiscriminately. It’s a heartbreaking scene, made even more poignant by the frustrating history behind it.
Describing Irwindale Speedway as pivotal to SoCal car culture two decades ago barely scratches the surface of its significance. Car enthusiasts from across the nation, eager to drift their Nissan 240SX or 350Z, were well aware of it. The venue hosted the height of Formula Drift’s excitement, filled with billowing tire smoke, and for many years, everything seemed to go smoothly.
The stories on our site over the years highlight the rollercoaster nature of it all. In 2016, we ran a blog titled “All Is Right in the House of Drift,” but by August 2017, that sentiment had shifted. At that time, we reported that Irwindale Speedway was slated for closure. However, just a few months later, in December, the situation changed, and by February 2018, Formula Drift had reinstated Irwindale on its schedule. It felt like a true victory for grassroots motorsports—or so we believed.
In 2022, news broke about Irwindale Speedway’s sale to a Los Angeles developer, and since then, the outlook has been bleak, with both local and national media covering the facility’s impending demise. We created a YouTube video discussing this issue a few months back, and our friends at Donut recently addressed it as well.
It appears that the property’s situation fluctuates monthly, yet one certainty remains: there will be no racing there again.
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Irwindale Speedway is being dismantled following years of uncertainty.
A video posted on social media on Monday captures demolition machinery dismantling the grandstands at Irwindale Speedway.