The track was conceived by businessman Richard Hogue, who in July 1963 acquired a 320-acre plot of former cotton-growing land near the Estrella Mountains. Racing promoter J. C. Agajanian persuaded Hogue to add an oval circuit to his originally planned road course, and the facility opened in January 1964 as Phoenix International Raceway. The original complex included a 1-mile oval, a 2.7-mile road course sharing portions of the oval, and a quarter-mile dragstrip.
The track's distinctive frontstretch kink — commonly called the "dogleg" — was a carry-over from the original design that used parts of the oval for the road course layout. The oval held its first race on March 22, 1964, with A. J. Foyt winning a USAC event. In April of that year the facility received FIA sanction, with Dave MacDonald winning the first FIA-sanctioned event.
Phoenix International Raceway struggled with attendance and operational issues in its early years. Promoters Harry Redkey and Bob Huff took over operations in 1964, and a series of grandstand improvements and track surface widenings followed through 1965-66. The track experienced several fatal accidents in its early period, including the death of drag racer Robert Snyders on the very first dragstrip event day in March 1964.
Richard Hogue and his wife Nancy divorced sometime between 1965 and 1967; Nancy became the facility's sole owner and brought in Agajanian as promotional director. The track was sold to Malcolm Bricklin's General Vehicle Inc. in January 1973 and briefly rebranded "FasTrack International Speedway," but General Vehicle went bankrupt in January 1976. A group led by Bob Fletcher purchased the facility for approximately $400,000 in August 1976, restoring the Phoenix International Raceway name and overseeing a repave of the oval surface in 1977. The facility also saw its first NASCAR-sanctioned event that year, a NASCAR Winston West Series race won by Cale Yarborough on November 27.
Dennis Wood and California businessman Warner Hodgdon subsequently acquired the track, before Wood bought out Hodgdon's share in 1983. In 1985, farmer Emmett "Buddy" Jobe purchased the facility and embarked on a sustained expansion programme that transformed it from a regional oval to a major-league venue.
Jobe's ownership, which ran from 1985 to 1997, oversaw the track's first NASCAR Cup Series race in November 1988 — won by Alan Kulwicki — and extensive grandstand construction. Seating capacity grew from approximately 10,400 to nearly 60,000 by 1995, with Jobe stating he had invested over $10 million in the facility during his tenure. A permanent infield road course measuring 1.51 miles was added in 1992.
In 1997, the International Speedway Corporation (ISC) purchased Phoenix International Raceway for $46 million. Under ISC, the facility underwent two significant reconfigurations: a 2011 repave that widened the frontstretch and adjusted the dogleg geometry, and a $178 million renovation completed in 2018 that demolished the frontstretch grandstands, extended the Allison Grandstand, shifted the start-finish line to after turn two and before the dogleg, and modernized the infield. Seating capacity was progressively reduced as seats were widened and grandstands redesigned, settling at 42,000 by 2019. In 2018 the facility acquired the name ISM Raceway through a naming rights deal; that relationship ended in 2020 and the track reverted to Phoenix Raceway. When NASCAR purchased ISC outright in 2019, the track passed into direct NASCAR ownership.
Phoenix International Raceway held USAC championship races from its opening in 1964, including the annual Jimmy Bryan Memorial and Bobby Ball Memorial events. CART took over both events in 1979 when CART broke away from USAC, with the Bobby Ball Memorial running until 1986 and the Jimmy Bryan Memorial continuing under CART sanction until 1996, when the Indy Racing League assumed control of the event. The IRL race at Phoenix continued until 2005 before being dropped.
Open-wheel racing returned in 2016 when IndyCar, the successor to the IRL, brought a race to the recently reconfigured oval. The IndyCar event ran through 2018 before being dropped due to poor attendance. In 2025 it was announced that IndyCar would return to Phoenix in 2026, sharing a weekend with NASCAR.
Phoenix Raceway hosts two annual NASCAR Cup Series race weekends. In 2020 the fall Phoenix event was elevated to championship weekend status, replacing Homestead-Miami Speedway as the venue for the NASCAR Cup, Xfinity, and Craftsman Truck Series season finales. That arrangement is scheduled to end in 2026 when the championship returns to Homestead-Miami. The facility is also the site of the annual Rattlesnake Hill open general admission area, named after accounts of facility staff having to remove rattlesnakes and scorpions from the track's hillside prior to events.
In its current configuration, Phoenix Raceway measures 1.000 miles by NASCAR standards, with 9 degrees of banking in turns one and two, 11 degrees in turns three and four, 9 degrees on the frontstretch, and 3 degrees on the backstretch. The IndyCar Series remeasured the track at 1.022 miles following the 2016 reconfiguration. The dogleg on the frontstretch remains the track's defining visual characteristic, a legacy of the original multi-layout design dating back to 1964.