Teams concerned about Atlanta Motor Speedway
Posted: Tue October 28, 1997 at 2:37 PM ET
I've been getting an earful from some NASCAR team bosses about the Winston Cup season finale.
They are plenty worried about the NAPA 500 on November 16 at Atlanta Motor Speedway. The track has been reconfigured and repaved. Several teams tested there last week and found it too fast and way too demanding on chassis and tires.
They were turning laps at more than 190 mph. Those are Daytona speeds on a medium-size, 1 1/2-mile track. Straightaway speeds consistently exceeded 200.
Robert Yates, car owner for Dale Jarrett and Ernie Irvan, told me his cars were hitting 208 to 210 on the Atlanta straights.
Yates hasn't seen speeds like that, anywhere, since before carburetor restrictor plates were introduced at Daytona and Talladega 10 years ago.
Plates aren't required at Atlanta, and Yates' Fords are developing 750 horsepower there.
The old back straightaway has been made the front stretch. There's a dogleg in it, to accommodate more prime views of the pits and start-finish line from new grandstand seats.
For competitors, the dogleg means faster exit from the new turn four, and faster entrance of the new turn one. And the repaving itself raises speeds by enhancing tire grip.
Dale Earnhardt's crew chief, Larry McReynolds, told me that his team calculates that during a lap that takes about 29 seconds, their car is going straight for only six seconds at Atlanta. The rest of the time, said McReynolds, the car is turning. That, pl
us the high speed, adds up to enormous stress loads.
Yates says teams have never pushed chassis and tires this hard. Anywhere. He fears the force of turning could rip tires right off the rims. It might help, he says, if NASCAR would stop teams from one common practice -- tinkering with tire pressures lower
than what Goodyear recommends.
Ray Evernham, team manager for points leader Jeff Gordon, told me flat-out: I'm concerned for my driver's safety.
Why ride into the swamp?
In sports car racing, here's the real reason Daytona, Watkins Glen and other tracks have gone back to the old SCCA, replacing SportsCar as their sanctioning body. Andy Evans, owner of SportsCar, wants to jazz up his series with elite factory teams from Eu
rope, such as Mercedes, Porsche, and McLaren-BMW. Daytona boss Bill France Jr. has seen excessive factory involvement damage or even ruin various racing series over the years, and he wants no part of it for his Rolex 24-hour.
France says factory teams either win or quit. Then their absence leaves series without enough competitive cars.
Evans thinks he has a vision, based on factory teams, that could take sports car racing to new heights of popularity.
France thinks Evans has the same old idea everybody else has had. And it didn't work. Why, France asked me, should we ride that horse deeper into the swamp?
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