Portland International Raceway

Portland International Raceway at a glance

Location

Portland, Oregon

Type

road course

Length

1.967 mi (3.166 km)

Turns

12

Direction

clockwise

Surface

asphalt

Opened

1961

Owner

City of Portland

Capacity

30,000

Address

1940 N Victory Blvd

Phone

+1-503-823-7223

Website

portlandraceway.com

Track map and layout

Portland International Raceway sits on the almost perfectly flat former streets of Vanport, a city destroyed by a 1948 flood, which gives the circuit an unusually level, wide-radius character compared with most modern road courses. The current Grand Prix Circuit, reconfigured and repaved for 2008, runs clockwise for 1.967 miles through 12 turns, including the Shelton Chicane, a hard right-hander at the end of the front straight named for Oregon racing figure Monte Shelton. An alternate configuration removes the chicane and shortens the lap slightly to 1.915 miles across 9 turns. Because the track is built into a public park within the Delta Park complex, it shares its footprint with a golf course, soccer fields, and recreational paths, and the layout has been tweaked repeatedly over six decades to balance racing use with the surrounding park.

Named corners and sections

• Shelton Chicane. A hard right-hand chicane at the end of the front straight, added in the 2008 reconfiguration and named for Oregon racing figure Monte Shelton.

Configurations

Events and race weekends

PIR's headline weekend is the NTT IndyCar Series' Grand Prix of Portland in August or September, a fixture on the series calendar since IndyCar first raced there in 1984. ARCA Menards Series West and various regional development series support the IndyCar weekend, and the track also hosted Formula E in 2023 and 2024. Away from professional racing, PIR runs a busy year-round calendar of SCCA and OMRRA motorcycle road racing, autocross, and car-club track days, plus the long-running Rose Cup club races dating back to the track's 1961 opening.

Getting there and parking

PIR is inside Portland city limits, less than a mile west of Interstate 5 within the Delta Park complex, making it one of the most accessible major road courses in the country. Portland International Airport is a short drive across the Columbia River to the northeast.

• Portland International Airport (PDX) · about 15 min drive

Hotels and camping near Portland International Raceway

Because PIR sits inside Portland proper, visitors have the full range of the city's hotels available rather than relying on a single nearby town; downtown Portland and the airport corridor along I-205/Airport Way are both a short drive from the track.

Where to look

Downtown Portland and the PDX airport corridor, both roughly 15-20 minutes from the track.

Track days, driving experiences and lap records

PIR is one of the busiest club circuits in the Pacific Northwest. Oregon Region SCCA runs regular Track Night in America sessions, autocross, and regional road racing, Cascade Sports Car Club holds its own track days and driving schools, and Hooked on Driving runs HPDE programs, with the track described by instructors as approachable for first-timers but technical enough to reward experienced drivers. OMRRA sanctions club motorcycle road racing on the same layout.

Who runs days here

• Oregon Region SCCAcar
• Cascade Sports Car Clubcar
• Hooked on Drivingcar
• OMRRAmotorcycle

Lap records

Spectator guide

Because PIR's layout is flat and set within an open park, sightlines across much of the infield are good from general-admission areas, and the Grand Prix of Portland weekend draws large crowds to a facility that otherwise sees modest, club-racing-sized attendance most of the year.

Weather

• Sep: typically dry with highs in the mid-70s°F, Portland's classic late-summer weather

History of Portland International Raceway

Built on a lost city

Portland International Raceway opened in June 1961 on the site of Vanport, a wartime housing city of some 40,000 residents that was wiped out by a catastrophic Columbia River flood in 1948. The track's flat, wide-radius layout is a direct legacy of that history: the circuit follows the grid of former Vanport streets, giving PIR an unusually level surface compared with most purpose-built road courses of its era. From the outset the track hosted the Rose Cup Races, a club and vintage racing tradition that has continued in some form for more than six decades.

Growth through the CART/IndyCar era

PIR became a fixture of major open-wheel racing in 1984, when Al Unser Jr. won the track's first CART IndyCar race, launching a long run of IndyCar weekends that made the circuit one of the series' most consistent West Coast stops. The track produced some of IndyCar's most memorable finishes, including Mario Andretti's 1986 win by just 0.070 seconds and a dramatic three-car battle to the line won by Mark Blundell in 1997, both of which are still cited among the closest finishes in the series' history.

Reconfiguration and present day

The circuit underwent a major renovation between 2007 and 2008, including a full repave and a layout revision that added the Shelton Chicane, named for Oregon racing figure Monte Shelton, and reopened in February 2008 as the current 12-turn, 1.967-mile Grand Prix Circuit. PIR briefly hosted Formula E in 2023 and 2024 alongside its continuing IndyCar dates. Owned and operated by the City of Portland within the Delta Park complex, the track remains one of the busiest club-racing venues in the Pacific Northwest, hosting Oregon Region SCCA, Cascade Sports Car Club, Hooked on Driving HPDE events, and OMRRA motorcycle racing throughout the year alongside its professional race weekends.

Frequently asked questions

Other tracks nearby

• The Ridge Motorsports Park · 117 mi · road course
• Pacific Raceways · 124 mi · road course
• Westwood Motorsport Park · 257 mi · historic circuit (defunct)
• Area 27 Motorsports Park · 287 mi · road course
• Thunderhill Raceway Park · 419 mi · road course
• Sonoma Raceway · 514 mi · road course