Irwindale Speedway Is Being Demolished After Years in Limbo
A video uploaded Monday to social media shows demolition equipment tearing down the grandstands at Irwindale Speedway. The post Irwindale Speedway Is Being Demolished After Years in Limbo appeared first on The Drive.
Irwindale Speedway is finally, actually gone. We knew the day was coming for Southern California’s historic House of Drift but, maybe foolishly, there was a shred of hope so long as it remained standing. That’s no longer the case as a video was posted to social media Monday morning showing the track’s grandstands and call box being demolished.
@danger_media uploaded the clip they filmed while driving on Live Oak Avenue. What used to be the main seating area was falling in as excavators shoved it over unceremoniously. It’s a tragic sight, and one that’s made worse by the frustrating backstory of it all.
While it would be accurate to describe Irwindale Speedway as key to SoCal car culture 20 years ago, that would still be underselling it. Everyone around the country with a serious hankering for sliding their Nissan 240SX or 350Z knew about it. Formula Drift’s glory days were spent filling it with tire smoke, and for years, almost everything went great.
The stories on our site over the years show how back-and-forth it all was. While we ran a blog in 2016 titled “All Is Right in the House of Drift,” that was no longer the case by August 2017. We reported then that Irwindale Speedway was set to close. That changed just a few months later in December of that year, and by February 2018, Formula Drift added Irwindale back to its calendar. A real win for grassroots motorsports—or so we thought.
News of Irwindale Speedway’s sale to an LA developer broke in 2022. It’s been grim ever since as local and national media outlets told tales of the facility’s impending doom. We made a YouTube video talking about it just a few months back, and our pals at Donut did the same here recently.
It seems like the property’s fate changes by the month, but one thing appears to be for sure: Nobody is racing there again.
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The post Irwindale Speedway Is Being Demolished After Years in Limbo appeared first on The Drive.
