Spencer Speedway (Williamson)
ClosedClosed No longer racing, but some of the track is still there.
Also known as Apple Valley Speedway; Williamson International Speedway
Spencer Speedway combined an oval with a short drag strip on its front straight. The whole facility closed indefinitely after its final race night on September 4, 2026, a Legends Night with the Race of Champions Modified Series won by Jake Lutz, and will stay closed unless a buyer or leaseholder takes it over.
- Drag strip runs down the oval's front straight
- Raced
- 1959-91, 1993-2026
- State
- New York
- What's left
- A good length of the old track surface is still there, in poor to good condition.
- On the site today
- Still operating
- First race
- August 11, 1959
- Last race
- September 4, 2026 (Legends Night, oval)
- Track
- 1/10 mile, lengthened to 1/8 mile around 1997
- Surface
- Paved
- Address
- 3001 Ridge Rd
Williamson, NY 14589 - People
- Del, Merle and Walt Spencer, builders and owners (1955-93, 1996-2006)
- Phil Palacotti, drag strip manager (1959)
- Delbert Spencer, promoter (1964)
- Todd Hartman, owner (1993-94)
- Jeff Tome, owner and operator (1994-96)
- Jim Vollertsen, manager (1970s, 1996)
- John White, owner (2006-)
- Sanction
- IHRA, NHRA
- Elevation
- 430 ft (131 m)
- Coordinates
- 43.22706, -77.23852
Del, Merle and Walt Spencer built a half-mile dirt oval here in 1955. A paved tenth-mile drag strip ran along the grandstand straight, and drag racing started on Tuesday, August 11, 1959, running every Tuesday that season, with Phil Palacotti as manager. In 1962 it raced Saturday nights. The 1964 season opened May 2, with Delbert Spencer promoting, Gordie Uhl of Canandaigua as head official, and races every Saturday and Tuesday night. The 1968 season started May 18. Drag racing went on after that, though records are spotty, and 1980 ads listed races every Saturday night.
In 1993 Todd Hartman bought the oval from the Spencers, renamed it Apple Valley Speedway and ran IHRA drag races. His construction company went bankrupt in 1994, and to keep the speedway out of it he transferred ownership to his brother-in-law, Jeff Tome, who ran the strip under NHRA sanction from 1994 through 1996. Tome’s money problems and inexperience with promotion led to a bankruptcy filing in 1995, but the court let him run the 1996 season, when he renamed it Williamson International Speedway. The Spencers, who held the mortgage, moved to take it back and asked Jim Vollertsen, who had run the track for them for five years in the 1970s, to help. The name went back to Spencer Speedway. In 1996 Vollertsen planned to stretch the straightaway strip from a tenth to an eighth of a mile for NHRA racing on Saturday nights. That apparently happened, probably around 1997, and the eighth-mile ran at least through 2006, when the Spencers sold the track to John White, who promised to keep drag racing. The 2015 weekly schedule showed NHRA sanction.
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