New owners for Willow Springs
Willow Springs, the oldest active road course in the United States, has been purchased from the Huth family by an investment group led by Sam Byrne through CrossHarbor Capital Partners and the renowned Porsche devotees at Singer Vehicle Design.
Opened in 1953, the hillside property located an hour north of Los Angeles has been a popular venue for amateur racing and the filming of television shows, but its wider appeal has waned over the decades.
Through the early 1990s, Willow Springs was used a test track where IndyCar, IMSA, and on rare occasion Formula 1 teams put the rustic and high-risk circuit to good use. The former American IndyCar Series also held races at the fast and sprawling course, but Willow Springs’ relationship with pro racing slowed as the 2000s approached.
Under the direction of Byrne, Willow Springs will join other longstanding Californian road courses like Laguna Seca and Sonoma Raceway in receiving investments to modernize the property, improve safety standards, and broaden its appeal as a hub for car and racing enthusiasts. There’s also a desire to reengage with pro series to explore hosting races after the project is completed.
The throwback track has great character, which its new owners are determined to preserve while adding some new elements including a Singer-hosted club and an array of shops to house racing teams, restoration businesses, car collections, and other industry-related companies.
“One of the most challenging elements is, how do you maintain what makes Willow great while making it safe and fun?” Byrne told RACER. “Being able to afford to do the improvements that it deserves and requires is the first step in the process.”
Rumors of Willow Springs being turned into a members-only facility are false, according to Byrne.
“I’m a huge enthusiast, not so much around motorsports, but around automotive, collecting, driving, and wrenching on cars with my kids,” he said. “Where I come from, I run a real estate investment firm that does clubs and various other things, so I’m often approached about financing track deals, and you can see so many of these things that have a website but never get off the ground.
“So I have been looking for almost a decade at the industry and how it might work in the future, including looking at operations in Europe that are that are more efficiently run and offer more things so that they can be more sustainable. And L.A. was the ideal place to potentially do something. What I’ve seen in the deals that I’ve seen is there’s a fundamental flaw, which is eliminating the public from a track experience that actually undermines the community that you want to create.
“Rich people don’t want to be exclusionary. They might want to have a better parking space. They might want to have access to everything, but a guy with 100 cars might meet a guy with the ‘73 Porsche RS lightweight that he always coveted, and he’ll spend three hours talking to that guy. So I just thought it was flawed when I looked at these private-track models, and I thought they had no they had no soul.”
With the heavy involvement from Singer, Byrne has received a powerful co-sign that lends credibility to his vision for Willow Springs. Speedway Motorsports Inc., which owns and runs ovals and road courses across the country, has been hired to manage Willow Springs, and former F1 driver Alex Wurz has been signed to deploy his track design and safety services to update the road courses.
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