The circuit was established by the Singer Car Club, with its opening meeting held on 17–18 February 1962. The land was provided by Dan Cleary, a wealthy local grazier whose earthmoving business also supplied the equipment used during construction. The track was designed and built by George Murray and Jack Allen.
The original lap distance of 1.690 km (1.050 mi) was later extended to 1.960 km (1.218 mi), and a further expansion in 1974 created a "Grand Prix" circuit of 2.625 km (1.631 mi) with a distinctive figure-eight layout incorporating a bridge where the track crossed over itself. Despite the crossover, racing direction remained anticlockwise throughout. The wider facility also included a motocross track, a skidpan, a dirt track, a four-wheel drive course, and a 1,000-foot drag strip.
Oran Park hosted the Australian Grand Prix twice, both times for Formula 5000 cars. Max Stewart won the 1974 event driving a Lola T330. In 1977 Warwick Brown took victory in a Lola T430 Chevrolet, though the result was complicated by a penalty for Alan Jones, who had crossed the line approximately 40 seconds ahead of the field before being penalised 60 seconds for jumping the start, dropping him to fourth classification.
The circuit hosted a round of the Australian Touring Car Championship every year from 1971 until 2008, a run of nearly four decades. Allan Moffat and Mark Skaife are the joint most successful drivers at Oran Park in the ATCC, each winning six rounds.
The inaugural ATCC round in 1971 was the scene of one of the championship's most dramatic title deciders. Bob Jane, driving a Chevrolet Camaro ZL-1, beat Allan Moffat's Ford Boss 302 Mustang to secure Jane's third ATCC title. The race was further marked when a member of the public drove a road-registered Valiant through an open gate onto the circuit, completing several laps before exiting undetected by officials — Group E regulations having required the presence of production cars that perhaps masked the intruder.
Endurance races for touring cars were held at Oran Park between 1977 and 1989. The inaugural Rothmans 500 was run in 1977 with a second edition in 1978, after which the endurance calendar contracted. The final Oran Park tourer enduro was the 1989 Pepsi 300, won by Andrew Miedecke and Andrew Bagnall in a Ford Sierra RS500.
The last V8 Supercars round at the circuit was held in December 2008, won by Garth Tander in a Holden VE Commodore.
Oran Park hosted the Superbike World Championship twice. In 1988 it held the second-to-last round of the inaugural season of the championship. Mick Doohan, then at the outset of a career that would yield five 500cc Motorcycle World Championships, won both races on his Yamaha FZR750. The circuit hosted the championship again in 1989. International riders were critical of the safety margins, particularly concrete walls lining the outside of several corners that left minimal runoff for errant riders.
The New South Wales Government purchased the land on which Oran Park stood for a new housing development, ending the circuit's active life. The last motorcycle meeting was the BelRay 6 Hour on 21–22 November 2009. The scheduled final race meeting on 23–24 January 2010 was cancelled due to insufficient entries, making the Independent Race Series event on 16 January 2010 the last competitive event held at the circuit. Public track days continued until the final day of operation on 25 January 2010. The site has since been redeveloped into housing.
Oran Park Raceway operated for 48 years as Sydney's primary motorsport facility, providing a venue for the full range of Australian national championships during a period when the sport grew from club origins to professional spectacle. Its loss to urban expansion followed a pattern seen at circuits across the world as metropolitan growth overtook former rural and semi-rural racing venues. The circuit produced significant moments in Australian motorsport history and gave early exposure to drivers who would go on to international careers, most notably Mick Doohan's dominant debut Superbike season in 1988.