Buttonwillow - The Circuit
My first ride at the new track at Buttonwillow
In early April 2026 the track day provider I help with, Volant Vivere, had its first trip to Buttonwillow’s new track, The Circuit. The track is adjacent to the original Buttonwillow track. It had been under construction for several years and events were planned and cancelled but it finally opened late 2025 and this was my first trip to ride the new track.
As to facilities, it has its own clubhouse and bathrooms with showers (all very nice), covered awning space (for rent), nice garages (also for rent), and paid RV spaces with power. There is a restaurant in the clubhouse that (typically) serves breakfast and lunch. There is a gate fee (just like the other BW track) for weekend events.
I did a track walk and a slow-car drive so I was able to inspect it up close, the aggregate is good (of course it’s still fresh) and the track is generally very smooth. There is one significant bump in one of the latter corners, Turn 7, at the apex (just be sure you’ve started accelerating before you get to it, enough to have positive tension in the driveline). There are a few spots where you can tell that it was paved in sections as the aggregate doesn’t quite line up. Hopefully they maintain it because those sections are where wear and undulations often occur as time goes on. Ideally the aggregate goes on in one long continuous deployment but without a huge GP-type track budget, aggregate usually goes on in sections or strips for most tracks in the US. The grip is fantastic and tire wear was quite nice and surprisingly evenly balanced on both sides of the tires.
As to the nature of riding it, it reminds me a lot of the Sonoma kart track in that it has lots of really late apexes. These take a while to get your control timing going (at least for me) and to build precision but I really like it once I start to figure it out. You come in on the brakes, not always sure of where best entry is but it often calls for a slow turn in and managing your throttle and/or brake just right so that you can hit that late apex while accelerating out with some enthusiasm.
Additionally, it has more elevation than you might expect for the location. We’re not talking Ridge, Sonoma, or Laguna types of elevation but some subtle stuff and some drops that are pretty fun. On the run out of T6 over the drop on my Tuono V4 and the BMW, significant wheelies are possible (and I’m not a wheelie kind of guy). There’s more elevation change than most on-board video captures.
This track has a remarkable number of late apex corners. What I have found, and I am by no means an expert this track, but at my pace there are several entry options, which makes for good passing opportunities on the way in. There are also at least 3 opportunities to hit 140 mph with a 200 bhp bike.
On this particular weekend event, we had some noteworthy regional and national level racers, including several from the BPR team as well as Joe Roberts from moto2. Nearly a third of our A group included national (or world) level racers! While this can be intimidating at first, it posed no problem for the rest of the A group riders as we would usually only see them for a few seconds and all of the passes were clean and expeditious.
We also had the ChampSchool and JP43 coaches working with their students. This is one of the particularly cool things about Volant Vivere (VV)—we’ve partnered with different professional coaching agencies and our track days are an official venue where their coaches can work with clients. The way this works is that the rider purchases their pass to ride and then they get in touch with whichever coaching organization we’ve coordinated with (usually ChampSchool/YCRS and JP43).
We had a few off-track excursions through the weekend and only a couple of fallers and mechanicals but nothing serious enough that required an ambulance. We had two groups with 30 minute sessions per group from 9AM - 5PM and an hour break for the catered lunch. Few people ran into substantial traffic and even if they did, because the sessions were 30 minutes, they could pull into the hot pits and wait 30 seconds and go straight back out again.
I spent a good part of the weekend working with a few clients, including a newer track rider who made some fantastic progress. It’s really neat to hear their response when they’ve made a jump in a particular area. One client managed to drop 5 seconds (!) over the course of a couple of sessions remarked about how everything felt so much different at that elevated pace and it brought back memories and observations I had a few years ago (and still do) as my pace improves.
Below is a sample lap; I was riding with a client to get some video footage for him to use with his coach. I still have loads to work on myself but it may give you a better sense of the track if you’ve not ridden there.
All in all, I really like the track. It’s a bit of a haul with a 300+ mile drive to get down there so I don’t expect to make a lot of trips there but at least I have a sense of it now and have lots to work on the next time. I have to periodically remind myself of just how fortunate we are in Northern California to have so many great tracks at our disposal. If you count the two tracks at Thunderhill and two tracks at Buttonwillow, we now have 6 tracks within 5 hours of the Bay Area.
It was a good time and great to be a part of the VV team. The responses we heard from customers were very positive and it’s nice to be able to spend a good amount of time working with riders and peers you respect.