When Willow Springs Raceway's new ownership group announced the creation of the exclusive Singer Drivers Club last year, L.A.'s car community went into a state of shock. Longstanding rumors surrounding a potential sale had bounced around the net for years beforehand, amid an onslaught of increasingly popular private race track clubs popping up across the country. From Thermal in nearby Palm Springs to the Concours Club in Miami, Ten-Tenths in Carolina, and even potentially the Circuit of the Americas coming soon, race tracks increasingly seemed to cater only to the one percent of the one percent. 

Willow's historically funky awesomeness and affordability made LA's closest track a true survivor—hence a 2019 appearance in the Ford v Ferrari that required little in the way of Hollywood backdating.  For the well-heeled private racing club demographic, though, the amenities were simply not good enough. So plans emerged from the new CrossHarbor Capital and Singer venture to pour money into the project: updating track surfaces and barriers and runoff to FIA standards, erecting new structures for events, catering, and even potential living quarters, naming the cart track after F1 world champ and Singer compatriot Jensen Button, and more. 

All the money those updates would require seemed likely to price the average track rat entirely out of the picture. Then, last fall, an inaugural public opening dubbed Willow Springs Reimagined—typicaly nomenclature of a Porsche 911 "reimagined" by Singer—revealed a more hospitable plan for the fancy fresh facilities. So this year with another Reimagined on the way, Willow invited media out to meet a new face for the project, Kai Lerman, who signed on after decades coordinating experiential events for the Peninsula hotel group including The Quail, A Motorsports Gathering at Monterey Car Week. 

Little did Lerman know, though, that between stints out on the track, I showed up hoping to learn whether any average people might ever get to truly experience Willow Springs again.

Re-Reimagining Willow Springs Reimagined

Lerman described last year's event as more of a "year zero" trial run, sort of akin to grabbing a first coffee after matching online rather than leaping headlong into a true first date. He plans a vastly expanded lineup that includes vintage racing on Big Willow, a new hillclimb format supported by the Petersen Automotive Museum, AHRA motorcycles lapping, stadium trucks jumping, public karting available for signup, plus drift pad and rally stage ride-alongs hosted by DirtFish and Rivian. A curated Cars & Bids auction will take place on-site, too.

Our media day started with the Petersen crew conducting a bit of a test run for the hillclimb. While Herbie the Love Bug, the actual Volkswagen Beetle from the Disney films, roared to life and ran a few warmup laps, the Petersen's mechanics also pulled out an air-cooled Porsche 911, a Triumph Spitfire, and a rare Fiat Abarth Challenge race car. Singer Drivers Club also threw a pair of caged Toyota GR86s into the mix, which members can use to level up their track skills before risking their seven-figure restomods.

I took a sighting lap of the proposed hillclimb in the passenger seat of the Abarth. The course begins with a hard launch off Big Willow's start-finish line, then a wide left at full throttle before carrying as much speed as possible into the long uphill right-hander that often catches out timid drivers. Instead of finishing at the top, however, the so-called hillclimb then turns decidedly downhill, toward a much tighter off-camber left before tailing out between two cones right before the fastest portions of the "Fastest Road in the West."

Turns out I won the race to sign my waivers and slap on a crash helmet, because all of a sudden I set out first in one of the GR86 race cars. Despite never having driven one previously, not understanding the drive modes, and confusion at the existence of an automatic gearbox—laying out all my excuses in advance, as any professional driver knows so well—I somehow logged a respectable 1:08.

Maybe my dream of driving professionally might come true, actually, since that set an easy margin for the best first lap by anybody on-site, other than a legit NASCAR driver who came in second at 1:09. For my next run, I figured out how to put the GR86 in true Track mode, but then at the first hit of ABS, the car started beeping at me and locked the transmission into third gear, with no up- or downshifting allowed. Still, I cut another two seconds off, down to 1:06—at which point the timekeepers started logging tenths and hundredths, though on an iPhone from a spotter in a tower, so not a particularly official methodology, to say the least. Still, out of the 16 drivers, only our NASCAR pro logged a 1:05.65 before a Russian supercar influencer managed a 1:05.5 on his third try. Oh well.

Next, I hopped in for a single run in the Abarth. Rough launches by a few other assembled media members coaxed me into a hesitant, smooth start, but the Fiat's stiffer suspension and legit tires provided far more grip than the GR86. I struggled with the high clutch friction zone and flimsy shifter typical of a Fiat 500, but finished with a time of 1:11 nonetheless, again a second faster than my new NASCAR friend in second place. A silly event, no doubt, given the cars and drivers, but hopefully more legit historical cars from the Petersen, with more famous racing drivers behind the wheel, can provide a bit more drama at the official second running of Willow Springs Reimagined.

All That Willow Has to Offer

The diner bistro opened up for lunchtime next, where anyone with experience at the old Willow Springs will no doubt remember eating perfectly acceptable sandwiches, salads, and snacks. Here, the new Willow can certainly improve the offerings, if only in the hopes of quite literally catering to the Singer one-percenters with the kind of healthy California cuisine they no doubt expect.

I checked out a rendering of the full facility plans on the wall—next to beckoning beer taps—but spent most of lunch anxious to head over toward Streets for an afternoon of free lapping on the smaller circuit. Lotus kindly loaned me an Emira for the day, as proof that the mid-engined mini-supercar can drive to and from LA with a few sessions of hard driving in between, without concerns about reliability. Though neither caged nor gutted like the GR86 or Abarth, at least my old familiar friend came with the optional Sport suspension setup, a supercharged V6, and six-speed manual, plus Michelin Cup 2 tires.

Those tires started to balloon out early in my first session, causing some serious slipping and sliding as I tried to balance the transition from understeer to oversteer, maintain grip with an acceptable amount of angle, and take curbs lightly. The Emira's gear ratios almost—but not quite—perfectly match Streets of Willow in its new configuration, which runs only clockwise now due to the installation of new barriers and runoff zones.

Over the past few years, I'd grown to prefer counterclockwise here, and a pair of new chicanes coming downhill from the famous top bowl nearly caught me out once as I tried to loop around a V10 Lamborghini driving with a bit more prudence. Swinging out wide left, the Emira recovered, but I overcompensated back right, dipped my rear tires into the gravel, and sprayed pebbles everywhere. I whipped my hands back and forth, sawing for some front-end grip far too much, then somehow miraculously caught the near-spin before casually slotting back into second gear and continuing down the hill.

Only the Emira's easy mid-engined balance and light steering really kept me from losing it all. Lesson learned, I only gobbled up bunches of other, more capable cars on straighter sections for the rest of the day. A bit more power might have helped, but the nimble Lotus handling made for a more playful track session than in the GR86 I hopped into next. With even less grunt and an absolute slushbox of an automatic transmission, the GR86 seemed to stand still on the straights—which only meant I needed to focus more on maintaining momentum through every turn. And here, the GR86's surprisingly solid brakes, flat chassis, and communicative steering shone brightest. I passed a grand total of zero cars, but enjoyed every second of driving a slow car fast nonetheless.

In addition to the GR86, Singer Drivers Club also fields a fleet of Porsche GT4 RS Clubsports that members can graduate to driving with a professional coach in the passenger seat. Stepping up to true slicks, with a fully caged and street-illegal race car (but still A/C!), took a bit of adjustment after the day's earlier fare, but as always, the Porsche danced willingly and happily around Streets with a capital S. I caught a few moments of sketchy oversteer early on as the tires let loose once back on the power, but mostly I just trusted the chassis to carve and then hook up, rewarding a baffling amount of braking and steering simultaneously before the rasping flat-six screamed back toward redline. I just wanted more time in the Clubsport, but only got another quick stint in the Emira before I began worrying about running out of gas.

More to Come, Including More Costs

From a funky Abarth Challenge to a GR86, Emira, and various Porsches, the range of cars on display at Willow Springs seemed purposefully selected to represent a wide swath of potential track-day toys. But Lerman confirmed my not-so-sneaky suspicion that all the improvements will soon render my fond memories of $180 motorcycle track days a thing of the not-so-distant past.

"To a certain degree," he admitted, "If you want to enjoy a better track and you want to enjoy better facilities, better food, better environments, then that costs money, right? So eventually that needs to be paid for."

I proposed that much of the investment could come from CrossHarbor Capital's financial injection, plus the half-million-dollar or more Singer Drivers Club membership fees—critically, rather than skyrocketing the price for an average Joe to show up and enjoy a day at Willow.

"The idea is that it's priced so that it's still accessible for the public," Lerman nodded, "So people who come out see the value in it and say, 'Wow, this is really worth the money I'm spending.'"

Those renderings of the full buildout sure look a long way off, either way. The whole of Big Willow requires repaving, with new runoff zones, barriers, and the introduction of either a bridge or tunnel to allow access to new infield facilities, too. The planned Singer Drivers Club building at the top of the hill hasn't changed since last year, and Lerman told me the time horizon for the next round of renovations currently sits around mid-2028, which makes sense given that Goodwood and Singer recently announced that the U.K.'s excellent slate of events will arrive in the U.S. that fall.

More updates will ramp up in earnest after this year's Reimagined event, though the permitting process apparently requires a ton of time and effort despite the rural setting. The new ownership group hopes to support the high-desert community and LA car culture simultaneously, which means not shutting everything down to wrap up the work on a tighter timeframe. Suffice it to say, juggling a new members-only club with the track's needs and Lerman's vision of more events for the general public, as well as a potential slate of automaker launch programs, all sounds like a logistical nightmare.

At the very least, Lerman appears to recognize the conundrum and believes that shared passions can serve as a great equalizer of sorts.

"There's no inequality when you're on the track and you can talk cars or motorcycles," Lerman wrapped up, "Then it's everybody's game. I think that's key and that's what we want to really feature and focus on at the end of the day."

Driving home in the Emira after a fun day, I held onto at least a sliver of hope that Willow Springs can live up to such seemingly varied goals, keeping SoCal's greatest circuit open not just for the one percent of the one percent, but to us mere mortals as much as humanly possible, too.