Road conditions inside Etosha National Park

With two exceptions (the road from Anderson gate to Okaukuejo, and Von Lindequist gate to Namutoni) all the roads in Etosha Park are graded gravel roads, the conditions of which vary wildly through the year, always drivable in a normal car but with varying degrees of comfort, prepare for bumpy, corrugated, dusty roads with dips and small rocks strewn along your route, the roads cannot be described as comfortable.

So drive slowly and leave plenty time to return to camp or exit gate at the end of the day as visibility can get poor as vehicles (especially buses and bigger vehicles) speed back to camp kicking up clouds of dust that doesn't have time to settle before the next vehicle comes by!

Punctures are common in Etosha, lowering your tyre pressure can help with this. The three main camps (Okaukuejo, Halali and Namutoni) all have garages offering basic tyre repair (but not replacement tyres).
Experienced visitors to Namibia carry two spare tyres (full proper tyres not spare wheel biscuit tyres), this is good practice, if you are renting a vehicle check if it has two spare tyres as standard, if not request a second.

Speed limits and good game driving speed

The speed limit inside Etosha National Park is 60km/h but realistically this is too fast for game viewing and for some of the road conditions through the year, rather cruise around at 40km/h or less this makes it much easier to spot game and less risk of damaging tyres on the bumpy roads, there is also one major thing that inexperienced people to Etosha over look - stopping and dust!
Etosha Park is very, very dusty with fine white and grey powder like dust coating everything, so there you are toddling along looking for animals and birds and someone spots something you immediately jump on the brakes to look around and see what exciting wildlife has been spotted, this causes a huge layer of fine Etosha dust that your tyres were kicking up behind you (the faster you were going the bigger the cloud ), to envelope your car and if you have windows open also coat everything inside the car, this dust is so fine that even with windows closed it will make its way into the vehicle now getting coated in dust in not a disaster but not too pleasant either, what doesn't do so well is camera equipment, modern cameras have very sensitive sensors and even a tiny speck of dust will show up on all your photos! add to that trying to change lenses on a dslr and you have a dust spot nightmare, I go into more detail about this and how to avoid it in the photographic section on this website so I will just leave this one tip here:

Drive slow when game driving and when you see something DO NOT brake but go into neutral and roll to a stop, then maneuver the car to best see the wildlife, this will still create some dust but far far less, it is also less likely to spook a bird or animal.

Distances in Etosha Park

Etosha is a large park over 22, 000 square kilometres and although much is inaccessible there are long distances between camps and gates so you need to manage your driving times and distances.
Maps are available at all the camps with distances marked between waterholes and resorts giving you a starting point but don't calculate times based on the speed limit of 60km/h but rather calculate a speed of 20km/h, this may sound very slow but it allows for a slower (more observant) travel speed and stopping time to view the animals, a slower speed also disturbs the animals and birds less allowing you better views without scaring them away.
In Etosha you don't need to drive huge distances to see animals, it is one National Park where sitting at a waterhole produces better experiences than driving around a lot.