V8 Power Pack — Track Intro

Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta has always been slightly improbable, right from the off when, in 1969, three fellas named Earl Walker, David Sloyer, and Arthur Montgomery set out to build a world-class road-racing circuit on farmland in Hall County, Georgia. Dead-bang centre in the heart of stock-car country.

In terms of crazy ideas, this one was right up there with the best of ’em. The general view at the time was that it would take nothing short of a miracle to make this idea stick.

And that’s precisely what happened in 1970. But let’s back up a bit and talk about space.

The Final Frontier

Space as in 750 acres of farmland near Braselton, GA, where our three heroes decided to tattoo a track into Georgia clay.

And space, as in Earl Walker’s job prior to his return to Georgia. Walker was an aeronautical engineer who’d served time working in Alabama on Chrysler’s contribution to NASA’s Saturn I/IB programme.

Back in Georgia, Walker and David Sloyer—both amateur racers—soon came up with a dream to design and build a world-class track, with Arthur Montgomery making up the trio of dreamers who soon needed nothing short of a miracle to turn a dream into reality.

The Miracle

The miracle happened in 1970 when flood damage at Bridgehampton Race Circuit on Long Island forced its scheduled Can-Am round to find an urgent replacement venue.

Road Atlanta, still under construction, received an unexpected call. And Walker, Sloyer and Montgomery were smart enough to say, “Yes, no problem!” when asked if they could host the event. Can-Am, after all, was one of the world’s premier racing series. Getting it to Road Atlanta would undoubtedly put the circuit on the world map.

But there was a small issue. And one can almost imagine the three men standing there gaping at the circuit around them, still in its early stages of construction, and asking one another: “How the hell are we going to build this thing in six months?”

They quickly devised a compressed schedule that saw excavation, grading, paving, bathrooms, concessions, spectator facilities, and even a hastily built ticket-control building—which Walker later remembered as looking like a toadstool—all completed in roughly half the originally planned timeframe.

In August 1970, just a few weeks before the main event, Road Atlanta opened its doors by staging an SCCA regional meeting as part of the process toward international certification.

Then it was on to the real thing. September 13, 1970. The day Vic Elford put his extraordinary Chaparral 2J on pole, while Tony Dean won the Can-Am race in a Porsche 908/02.

And just like that, Road Atlanta had gone from an idea shared by a few Sunday-afternoon racers to an international racing venue almost before the concrete had properly cured.

Built into the Land

That first event also established Road Atlanta’s character. In a word: challenging. Period reports described it as relentlessly up and downhill, with blind corners and a layout that demanded more from drivers than many American circuits of the period.

Elford, notably, liked it for exactly that reason and was effusive after his pole lap. “For once,” he said, “someone has really used their head in designing it.”

Part of that identity comes directly from the terrain into which Road Atlanta was built. The circuit was not laid over a flattened site but carved into the rolling north Georgia countryside, and that was an inspired decision because it gave the circuit a unique personality: steep gradients, compressions, crests, blind approaches, and a constant sense that the track is moving underneath you.

That shape also helped make Road Atlanta unusually versatile. Sports cars, Can-Am monsters, touring cars, motorcycles, drift cars, club racers, prototypes, GT3, and historic machinery—all have found a home here.

NASCAR even brought its Grand American division to the circuit in 1973, with Camaros, Mustangs and Firebirds taking on a venue that was already establishing itself as something very different from the ovals dominating the southeastern United States.

The Difficult Years

In 1978, Road Atlanta was sold and changed hands several times thereafter in relatively short order. Through the 1980s and into the early 1990s, the facility began to suffer from limited investment, while rising speeds made some parts of the track increasingly problematic from a safety perspective.

The infamous Dip at the end of the back straight became one particular concern. A chicane was trialled, but it altered the character of the section without providing a convincing long-term solution.

Investment, meanwhile, remained scarce, and major racing activity declined with it. By 1993, the circuit had entered bankruptcy. New owners were found, and while they carried out repairs and resurfacing, it was obvious Road Atlanta needed another miracle to survive—and begin to thrive once more.

Enter the Don

Pharmaceutical entrepreneur, motorsport evangelist, racing team owner, and the man who treated American sports-car racing like a problem worth investing in—the one and only Don Panoz bought Road Atlanta in November 1996 and immediately embarked on a major redevelopment programme.

The changes were substantial. The circuit was reconfigured to provide club and school layouts, the Dip was removed, a 100-foot infield tunnel was added, barriers and gravel traps were installed, garage capacity increased, and a new paddock and pit complex followed.

But Panoz’s biggest contribution wasn’t concrete or asphalt. It was an idea. He wanted to make Road Atlanta a centrepiece of his quest to reinvigorate American sports-car racing.

Working with the Automobile Club de l’Ouest, Panoz created an event named Petit Le Mans, first held at Road Atlanta in 1998. The concept was ambitious: bring Le Mans-style racing and international machinery to America over 1,000 miles or 10 hours, whichever came first.

That first event proved a major success, and a year later Panoz founded the American Le Mans Series, with Road Atlanta becoming one of its blue-riband venues. Petit Le Mans soon evolved into one of North America’s great endurance races and remains a cornerstone of the circuit to this day.

Road Atlanta Keeps Evolving

The track itself has continued to change through the years. The late-1990s redevelopment reshaped the end of the back straight and created the modern 10A/10B complex. Further motorcycle-specific modifications came in the 2000s, and the entire surface was repaved before Petit Le Mans in 2007.

Ownership changed again in 2012, when NASCAR Holdings acquired the circuit as part of its purchase of the Panoz Motorsports group. And in 2019, Michelin became the circuit’s first entitlement partner, giving it the name it carries today: Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta.

Through it all, Road Atlanta continued finding new identities. It was even the birthplace of Formula Drift. That range says a lot about the place.

At its core is legacy: a circuit built on a dream and an insane schedule, nearly lost, rescued, modernised, repurposed and repeatedly reinvented—yet somehow never polished enough to become another anodyne racing circuit.

More than fifty years after that first Can-Am weekend, it still retains its roots—a road course carved into the Georgia hills, with just enough civilisation added around it to keep the racing going.

And now it comes to the V8 Power Pack for Project Motor Racing.

Put the hammer down around Road Atlanta and you’ll understand why this place has spent more than half a century refusing to become ordinary.