For many a NASCAR driver, Atlanta Motor Speedway’s worn asphalt racing surface is like a favorite easy chair. The older it gets the better it sits, but at some point it deteriorates to a point that it has to be replaced.
That’s where AMS is now with its track, which hasn’t been repaved since a reconfiguration from a true oval to the current quad-oval in 1997.
When the track was repaved 20 years ago, speeds increased dramatically initially, making it one of the fastest tracks in NASCAR.
Geoff Bodine won the pole that November with a track-record speed of 197.478 mph. Last year, Kurt Busch won the AMS pole with a speed of 191.582 mph. Even with 20 years of technological advancement in his favor, Busch was nearly six miles per hour off Bodine’s speed.
Over the years, as the asphalt became worn and abrasive, it made for slower race speeds and multiple grooves, which allowed the kind of side-by-side racing fans pay to see. Many an AMS race over the years has ended with the top two drivers running door to door at the finish line.
But the years have caught up with the track, and after this weekend the surface will be repaved.
“There is a time where every track has to do that, whether they want to or not,” Dale Earnhardt Jr. said during the sport’s media tour. “It will be good to get that placed smoothed out. It will age up pretty quickly again.”
Ryan Newman, who is tied with the late Buddy Baker for most Atlanta poles, with seven, said he looks forward to one last run on the old surface.
“It has always been a fun race track,” he said. “I started racing there in 2001 in the Busch (now Xfinity) Series. The pavement was four years old then, and we had to put new tires on every stop we could possibly get.”
Newman said that with the changes in technology in tires and asphalt, he wonders if the new surface will ever be as good as the one he’ll race on this weekend.
“I don’t see that happening four years from now,” he said. “I think we will still be running the tires we started the race on type of a deal, so I don’t know. … We will see. …
“I don’t know that you can do anything to make it as good as it is.”
Jimmie Johnson, the defending winner of Sunday’s Folds of Honor QuikTrip 500 and a five-time AMS winner, is among those who hate to see the old pavement go.
“I’m heartbroken like everybody else,” he said. “I know there is a time when it comes, and believe me, every driver and team representative was begging the track to hold off another year, but it had to be done.”
Johnson said that means, among other things, that there will be new drama come 2018.
“Somebody is going to break the track record,” he said. “I think we are going to have the fastest 1.5-mile speed in the history of 1.5-mile (tracks). There will be some storylines, but we just all love that old surface so much.”
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