What is NASCAR at Phoenix Raceway?
Phoenix Raceway is the one-mile, dogleg oval in Avondale, at the foot of the Estrella Mountains on the far west side of the Valley, where NASCAR’s Cup Series races twice a year: a spring weekend in March and a fall playoff weekend in late October. The next is March 12–14, 2027, with ARCA on Friday, a Saturday doubleheader of the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series and the NTT IndyCar Series, and the Cup race on Sunday, March 14. The fall Chase weekend is October 22–24, 2027, with the Freeway Insurance 500 on Sunday the 24th. Phoenix is 45 minutes from Scottsdale on an empty freeway.
For six years it was more than that. From 2020 through 2025 Phoenix hosted NASCAR’s Championship Weekend, the season finale for all three national series, and the title was decided here each November: Chase Elliott in 2020, Kyle Larson in 2021, Joey Logano in 2022, Ryan Blaney in 2023, Logano again in 2024 and Larson by two points over Denny Hamlin on November 2, 2025. That era is over. NASCAR moved the finale to a rotating venue, Homestead-Miami first on November 8, 2026, and Phoenix’s fall race became a mid-Chase playoff date: on October 18, 2026 Tyler Reddick won the Freeway Insurance 500, the seventh of ten Chase races.
The track opened in 1964 as Phoenix International Raceway, got its first Cup race on November 6, 1988, and was rebuilt for $178 million in 2018 into the current shape: a 42,000-seat grandstand on the dogleg side, the start-finish line moved to just before the dogleg, a fan midway in the infield and Rattlesnake Hill, the general-admission slope outside Turns 1 and 2 where locals bring coolers and dogs.
How to do it
Tickets. 2027 prices had not been posted as of October 2026; they go on sale through phoenixraceway.com, and in the championship years the fall grandstand sold out by summer, so the fall Chase weekend is still the one to buy early. Grandstand seats are reserved. Rattlesnake Hill is general admission, first-come, with coolers, chairs, canopies and pets allowed, and it is the cheapest ticket and the most local experience on the property.
Getting there. From Old Town: Loop 101 south, Interstate 10 west through downtown Phoenix, exit Avondale Boulevard and follow the signs south to the track. 45 minutes without traffic; on a Cup Sunday leave by 9 a.m. for an early-afternoon green flag and plan an hour to clear the lots after the checkered. General parking is free with shuttle buses to the gates; paid lots closer in put you in the same exit queue. The vendors are cashless, so bring a card.
Where to sit. The dogleg-side grandstand is the only grandstand now, so the question is height and position: high (above row 30) and between the start-finish line and Turn 1 gives you pit road, the dogleg and the backstretch in one look. Low rows near the fence are the loudest seats in Arizona and show you a quarter of the track.
Camping. The track sells weekend camping from basic lots to the backstretch RV spots along the fence, where families watch from their roofs; those spots carry a 10-year waiting list. Camping is the way to do the fall weekend as a three-day event, and the campgrounds are why the place feels like a town from Friday to Sunday night.
What to skip. Friday, unless you are camping; it is the short day. In March, do not skip Saturday: the IndyCar race, back since 2026, is the fastest thing you will see all weekend.
From the Indianapolis of the West to a dogleg
Richard Hogue, a Phoenix builder, broke ground in September 1963 on a one-mile oval, a road course and a drag strip in the desert below the Estrellas and called it the Indianapolis of the West; it opened on January 4, 1964, and A.J. Foyt won the oval’s first race that March. Open-wheel cars owned it for a quarter-century, until NASCAR’s Winston Cup arrived on November 6, 1988 with the Checker 500. Ricky Rudd led most of the day until his engine failed; Alan Kulwicki, an independent from Wisconsin, won by 18.5 seconds and a $54,100 purse, then turned his car around and drove the mile clockwise so he could see the fans’ faces. The Polish victory lap was born at Phoenix.
International Speedway Corporation, the France family’s track company, bought the raceway in 1997 for $46 million, and in 2005, after Arizona approved road funding around the site, NASCAR gave it a second Cup date. A 2011 repave widened the frontstretch and pushed the dogleg out 95 feet, sealing off the old road course. Then in late 2016 ISC approved the $178 million rebuild that produced today’s track: the start-finish line moved from the old frontstretch to just before the dogleg, a new 42,000-seat grandstand went up on that side, the turns were renumbered, and the infield got a fan midway with garage views. It opened for the November 2018 race, and two years later NASCAR made it the home of the Championship Weekend.
The championship years and what replaced them
Six title races in six Novembers made Phoenix the center of American stock-car racing for one weekend a year: Chase Elliott (2020), Kyle Larson (2021), Joey Logano (2022), Ryan Blaney (2023), Logano (2024) and, on November 2, 2025, Larson again, third behind race winner Blaney while Denny Hamlin, who had led 208 laps from the pole, finished sixth and lost the title by two points. NASCAR had already announced, in May 2025, a rotating finale starting at Homestead-Miami on November 8, 2026, and for 2026 it also replaced the elimination playoffs with a revival of the original Chase of 2004: ten races, the top 16 in points after 26 races, no eliminations, a win worth 55 points. Phoenix kept two dates and a Chase race, moved from the finale to October 18. Blaney won the March 8, 2026 race, Josef Newgarden won IndyCar’s first Phoenix race since 2018 on March 7, and Reddick won in October, when Larson’s late tire failure cut his points lead to five with three races left. The 2027 schedule, announced in August 2026, keeps the pattern: March 12–14 with IndyCar, October 22–24 in the Chase.
The Scottsdale angle
Scottsdale is a car town twice a year already: Arizona Car Week and Barrett-Jackson in January, the Goodguys Spring Nationals at WestWorld in March. The raceway is the live-racing end of that culture, and the Penske Racing Museum in North Scottsdale, with its Indianapolis winners, is the free primer for the IndyCar half of the March weekend. It is a 45-minute drive, and March is the easier of the two trips: spring-training weather, a Saturday IndyCar race and a Sunday Cup race in one ticket, and no championship pressure on the lots. The fall weekend in October is the bigger crowd and the one worth buying in the spring.