Colorado's road racing map is about to get smaller. Pikes Peak International Raceway announced in May that 2026 is its final season before the property gets redeveloped.
So if you've been telling yourself you'll get on track "next year," next year has fewer options than this year does. Here are the three road courses in this state, what each one actually teaches you, and the order I'd run them in.
Our paddock on a Colorado race weekend. Two of these three tracks are on our schedule every single year.
Colorado only has three road courses
That number surprises people. For a state this obsessed with cars, the list of places you can legally drive fast in a circle is short.
- Pikes Peak International Raceway — Fountain, just south of Colorado Springs. A 1.289-mile interior road course with 9 turns, inside a bigger oval. Final season is 2026.
- High Plains Raceway — out on the eastern plains past Byers, about an hour from Denver. A 2.55-mile full course with 15 turns and over 300 feet of cumulative elevation change per lap.
- Pueblo Motorsports Park — southeastern Colorado. A 2.2-mile road course with 10 turns, sharing a facility with a drag strip.
After 2026, wheel-to-wheel club racing in Colorado lives at two tracks. That's it. NASA Rocky Mountain and the Colorado Region of the SCCA run their road racing weekends at High Plains and Pueblo, and both are on our own 2026 calendar.
Three tracks. One clock running out. That's the whole reason this post exists.
Start at PPIR — while you still can
If you have never turned a lap on a road course, start at the smallest one.
PPIR's interior course is 1.3 miles and 9 turns. You can hold the entire lap in your head after two sessions. That matters more than you think. On a long, complicated track, a beginner spends the whole day just trying to remember what comes next. On a short one, you get past memorization fast and start actually learning car control.
SCCA's Track Night in America has been the easiest front door here for years. You bring your street car, a helmet, and a valid driver's license. There are three run groups — Novice, Intermediate, Advanced — and Novice is built for someone who has genuinely never done this.
The published SCCA member price for a 2026 Track Night at PPIR is $135, with non-members paying a $25 weekend membership on top, so $160 all in. That is the cheapest legitimate road course seat time in this state.
One honest note on timing: I'm writing this in August 2026, and some of the year's PPIR dates have already come and gone. The remaining calendar runs into October. If you want to say you drove PPIR, check what's left and book it now. There is no next season.
Then High Plains Raceway — the one that teaches your eyes
High Plains is where most Colorado racers actually grow up. It's our home track, and it's the hardest of the three to learn.
The reason is elevation. The published spec is over 300 feet of cumulative elevation change per lap, a 10% steepest climb, and a high point of 5,054 feet. Bill Howard drew the layout across undulating prairie and used every foot of it. Crests hide apexes. Downhill entries load the front and unload the rear exactly when you're asking the car to rotate.
That's the whole lesson at HPR: look further ahead than feels natural. The pavement in front of your hood tells you nothing here. The corner you can't see yet is the one you're already driving.
The track runs its own open lapping days at $219 for a summer full day if you register by the deadline, $239 after. There's also a $1,500 unlimited season pass, which flips the math if you're running more than about seven days a year.
If you want the corner-by-corner version before you go, I wrote a full High Plains Raceway track guide for first-timers that covers the layout, the altitude, and the wind.
Same car, same season, two very different tracks. The setup work that makes it fast at one place isn't what makes it fast at the other.
Then Pueblo — the one that teaches your right foot
Pueblo Motorsports Park is 2.2 miles and 10 turns, and it drives nothing like High Plains.
Where HPR flows and hides things over crests, Pueblo is long straights into hard braking zones into tight corners. It's a stop-and-go rhythm. You get to a high speed, you get rid of a lot of it in a hurry, and you turn.
That makes it a brutal, honest teacher of braking. Sloppy brake release shows up instantly at Pueblo as understeer on entry. Patience on corner exit pays you back down the next straight, where you can measure it. New drivers who feel fast at Pueblo usually aren't — they're just braking late and giving it all back before the next corner.
Pueblo is also the friendliest of the three for a first race weekend rather than a first track day. The paddock is relaxed, the facility is straightforward, and there's less to go wrong. Half our 2026 NASA season is down there.
Entry pricing depends entirely on which club is running the event and what you're entered in, so check the specific event listing rather than trusting a number from a blog. NASA Rocky Mountain's published weekend road racing entries have run in the neighborhood of $399 early to $499 at the track — treat that as a floor, not a promise, and budget around $500 per race weekend.
What running all three actually costs
Here's the honest ladder, cheapest to most expensive. These are seat-time costs only — they don't include getting your car there, fuel, tires, or a helmet.
| What you're doing | Where | Rough cost |
|---|---|---|
| Track Night in America (novice group) | PPIR | $135 member / $160 non-member |
| Open lapping day | HPR | $219 early / $239 late, full day |
| Club HPDE with an instructor | HPR or Pueblo | Varies by club — check the event listing |
| Wheel-to-wheel race weekend entry | HPR or Pueblo | ~$500, plus license and membership |
The jump that catches people isn't between tracks. It's between "I drove my street car on a road course" and "I own a race car." That second step brings a trailer, a tow vehicle, storage, and a garage full of parts. We've broken down what a Spec Miata season really costs if you want that math with the ugly parts left in.
The order matters more than the tracks
Here's what I'd actually do with a clean slate and a normal budget.
- PPIR Track Night. Smallest track, lowest cost, lowest stakes. Find out whether you love this before you spend real money finding out.
- A club HPDE at High Plains. Get an instructor in the right seat on a track that will humble you. This is where your vision and your line get built.
- A second HPR day, then Pueblo. Go back to HPR once so you can feel the difference a second visit makes. Then go to Pueblo and let the braking zones tell you the truth about your right foot.
- Spectate a NASA or SCCA race weekend. Walk the paddock. Ask questions. Grassroots racers are the most generous people in motorsport and almost nobody takes them up on it.
Two tracks, four or five days, and you'll know more about driving than three years of reading forums will teach you.
Before your first one, get your gear and your day organized so you're not the guy digging through a trunk at 7am. Our free Race Day Ready Pack is the checklist we actually use — what to pack, what to check, and what to write down after each session.
One more thing about the clock
I don't like writing urgency into posts. It usually means somebody's selling something.
But PPIR really is closing, and multiple outlets confirmed it back in May. Colorado is going from three road courses to two. Track Night at PPIR is the cheapest and least intimidating way anyone in this state has ever been able to try road racing, and that door shuts at the end of this season.
If you're in Colorado Springs or Pueblo or Denver and you've been circling this for a year — go this year.
And if what's stopping you isn't the track but the car, that's a solvable problem too. Our arrive and drive program puts you in a sorted race car at High Plains and Pueblo with a crew, coaching, and data every session, so you can find out whether you love this without buying a trailer first.
Sources: High Plains Raceway — Track Info, Pueblo Motorsports Park — Road Course, SCCA — Track Night 2026: Pikes Peak International Raceway, Grassroots Motorsports — PPIR to close at the end of 2026, Colorado Region SCCA — Tracks. Track specs, closure news, and entry prices verified against published sources as of August 2026. Everything about how these places drive comes from our own laps.
Do you believe?
