The venue traces its roots to a dirt track carved out of farmland in the community of Diggers Rest by a group of motoring enthusiasts, one of whom was Patrick Hawthorn, a petrol station owner from Clayton. The first formal meeting on a sealed surface was organised by the Australian Motor Sports Club and held on 14 January 1962. Among the competitors at that inaugural meeting were Bob Jane, Norm Beechey, John Wood, and Peter Manton. The original layout was the Club Circuit, which measures 1.609 km (1.000 mi) and remains in use.
In the early 1970s, racing driver and Melbourne tyre retailer Bob Jane purchased the circuit, expanding its scope to include drag racing and rallycross. In 1982 the venue was briefly renamed the Melbourne International Raceway. A significant extension to the road circuit in 1986 brought it to 2.280 km (1.417 mi); the main straight was lengthened to just under 1,000 m, separating the drag strip start from the circuit's apex to address long-standing complaints about surface grip in wet conditions.
The Thunderdome is a 1.801 km (1.119 mi) high-banked quad-oval speedway situated on the east side of the road circuit. Bob Jane's vision for the Thunderdome grew from visits he made to Charlotte Motor Speedway and Daytona International Speedway in the United States, and from his 1981 agreement with NASCAR president Bill France Jr. to bring stock car racing to Australia. Construction began in 1983 and cost A$54 million, with Jane personally contributing over $20 million. American engineers with banked oval construction expertise were brought in for the project. The Thunderdome opened on 3 August 1987.
Banking on turns 1 through 4 is 24 degrees, with 4 degrees on the front straight and 6 degrees on the back straight. The facility is technically a quad-oval, though it has been widely described as a tri-oval. It was originally named the Goodyear Thunderdome in recognition of Goodyear's naming rights sponsorship.
The first race using only the Thunderdome was the AUSCAR 200, held shortly before the Goodyear NASCAR 500. Eighteen-year-old Terri Sawyer won the 110-lap race from the front row in a Holden VK Commodore, to date the only woman to win a race on the oval. The Goodyear NASCAR 500, held on 28 February 1988, was the first NASCAR event ever staged outside North America. It attracted prominent Winston Cup drivers including Bobby Allison (who had won the Daytona 500 two weeks earlier), Neil Bonnett, Michael Waltrip, Harry Gant, Morgan Shepherd, Dave Marcis, and Kyle Petty. Richard Petty set an unofficial lap record of 28.2 seconds in testing before the race, averaging 142.85 mph. Bonnett won the race from Allison and Dave Marcis. A second NASCAR event, the Christmas 500, was held later that year and won by Morgan Shepherd. The Thunderdome's AUSCAR programme featured cars built on Australian Ford Falcon and Holden Commodore platforms with right-hand drive, racing clockwise. Brad Jones won five consecutive AUSCAR championships from 1989/90 to 1993/94. Declining entries in both AUSCAR and NASCAR led to the final Thunderdome events being held in 1999.
Between 1980 and 1984, Calder Park hosted the Australian Grand Prix. The 1980 edition was open to Formula One, Formula 5000, and Formula Pacific cars and was won by Alan Jones in the Williams FW07B. From 1981 to 1984 the race was restricted to Formula Pacific cars; Roberto Moreno won three of the four editions, with Alain Prost claiming 1982. The race attracted numerous Formula One World Champions during this period, including Jones, Prost, Niki Lauda, Nelson Piquet, and Keke Rosberg.
In October 1987, Calder Park hosted a round of the inaugural World Touring Car Championship on the combined road-oval circuit. The race, known as the Bob Jane T-Marts 500, was won by Steve Soper and Pierre Dieudonné in an Eggenberger Motorsport Ford Sierra RS500. The circuit held 25 rounds of the Australian Touring Car Championship between 1969 and 2001, with Allan Moffat recording the most victories at the venue with five wins.
The road circuit lay largely unused for approximately 15 years during the 2000s and 2010s. In 2023, now owned by Bob Jane's son Rodney, the circuit was repaired and upgraded to a standard sufficient for Motorsport Australia-sanctioned club and state-level events to resume. Rodney Jane has also expressed a wish to eventually revive oval racing on the Thunderdome.
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