On Road Atlanta

Every once in a while someone picks the scab that is "Why did Road Atlanta get rid of The Dip?" and more hilarity ensues.

Quick summary: built in 1969 with its first race in 1970, Road Atlanta is a racetrack just northeast of its eponymous city. It's a rockin' great race track, filled with excellent elevation changes, fast sweeping corners, and is a challenge both technically and emotionally. It's truly one of this country's jewels and is one of my "most favoritest" tracks in the USA (others being similarly-challenging tracks such as VIR, Watkins Glen, and Road America).

Its signature portion Back When was "The Dip" or "The Gravity Cavity", a deep drop downhill run into a valley/cavity that suddenly changed to a steep rise, shooting the driver into an off-camber turn to under an infield-access bridge at its peak, then immediately down the hill's backside to another sweeping turn that shot you down the front straight. It was as roller-coastery as you can ever get without being attached to some rails, certainly as you can ever get in a race car, and was adored by any racers that dared challenge it.

In 1996, the track was purchased by Don Panoz, a friend of racing and a pharma wiz that made his fortune developing the trans-dermal patch. Then he got interested in cars and racing (including developing his own protoype race cars). In order to bring the track up to FIA standards and make it a more-attractive venue for bigger events, Panoz had the track reconfigured. He carved a new paddock into the hillside along the front straight across the track from the original paddock. However, to access that infield paddock he placed a tunnel across the Dip and filled the area above it, using that as an access tunnel to the new paddock.

Along with losing the elevation thrill of The Gravity Cavity, Panoz removed its sweeping fast corners by creating a tight left-right chicane at the end of the long back straight. These changes emasculated one of (if not "the") signature characteristics of the track.

Ever since the demise of The Dip, those who drove the original config wax eloquent about how "it used to be" and complain about the change. I get it; I've complained about it myself from time to time, pretty much thinking that Don Panoz (R.I.P. 2018) probably had to justify this desecration to St Peter himself. 

 

Go to Google Maps and check out satellite view of the track. Road Atlanta seemingly appears in the middle of Nowhere, Georgia; in the 80s and 90s it actually was in the middle of nowhere! But where Road Atlanta used to be in agriculture country (there was a chicken farm within "nose-sight" of the track) it's now being swallowed by Metro Atlanta suburbia.

But what's done is done, and it shall never go back.

But why? Why destroy such a signature portion of a signature venue? Surely Panoz didn't take this lightly? I certainly don't think he did.

Panoz had to do something to get big events there, the kind of something that would bring in big crowds (and big money); after all, no major venue can survive long without bringing in big gate money with spectator events. That answer was FIA-sanctioned events, with FIA-sanctioned cars, crews, and equipment (read: many tractor trailers). I'm convinced that the decision was absolutely not taken lightly and the over-riding reason that The Dip was covered up was to bring these big events to Road Atlanta -- and thus ensure its survival.

IMO, the advantages of doing this change so were two-fold: paddock access and safety.

The original paddock was no longer sufficient for major sanctioning bodies, which bring lot of people and equipment in a lot of big trailers. I remember in the old days of the SCCA Runoffs (long time before amateur racers were arriving in tractor trailers) that paddocking with just amateur racers was a Tetris game. Most of us not only weren't on pavement, we were, literally, paddocked out in the weeds (I usually ended up in the kudzu...hell, one year we parked our open trailer near the fringe of the kudzu and a week later we had to machete it out of there.)

To resolve this, Panoz decided that he would carve back the infield hillside overlooking the front straight and build below it a new "pro paddock".

But if you were planning to carve back the hill overlooking the front straight to install a new paddock, how would you get the trucks over there? You're not going to send them over that small T11 bridge, as it's too tight and would likely require re-engineering/replacing that bridge. Plus, it would create a lot of conflicting traffic with infield spectators. I suppose you could have brought trucks in via the old Howington Road access, but I don't know if the track even still owns that property. Or maybe through the new area that was created to the east/northeast (behind Turn 1 where the companies are now). But you'd still need to build a bridge/tunnel across the track at T1 for that.

Or...you can cross The Dip with an access road and tunnel to the infield, and raise the track over it with an above-grade bridge. By doing those changes it would provide tractor-trailer access to the new necessary inner paddock.

As for safety, I don't recall a lot of complaints about safety of the track back in the day. I do recall a lot of awe describing the thrill of it. I loved it. We did lose an SCCA member there one year, but that was an open-wheel incident, and then there was that terrible movie filmed afterward where a car launched and crashed into the span of the bridge (a movie so bad, that I can't even remember the name of it). Of course, I don't recall a lot of complaints about racing without certified closed-face helmets, fire suits, and head and neck restraints...but we require them today.

Regardless, that mile-long, unrestricted back straight was now funneling into an eye-of-the-needle slot through the T11 Bridge, where right after that was an off-camber downhill turn right toward wall. The speed you would have carried through there in today's prototypes would have been incredible. I'm guessing major sanctioning bodies said - and FIA inspectors - said "nope" (recall this was only a couple years after Senna's crash), so something had to be done.

Couple the need for more paddock space, a means of accessing it, to the need to slow the cars down on the back straight. The Dip was done.

I'd suggest that, but for the need for the inner paddock and the desire for FIA certification, The Dip could still have existed. But I'd also suggest that without these changes it may (would?) have resulted the demise of the track's financial security. Purely conjecture on my part of course.

 

And I can also confess that while 19-yr-old Greg got a lot of delight at driving that fast through the Dip and shooting for the hole through that bridge at speed, Today's Greg may look at it quite askew...

Today, if you want to touch the old Dip, just walk over to the truck access tunnel; the floor of the tunnel is the bottom of the old Dip. Then step out of the tunnel and look up at the current track level and you can see just how much of an elevation change that was...at 125mph plus in my 175hp Showroom Stock car. What would it have been in my 300hp Super Touring monster? Or today's T1 cars? Woof.

I've raced both configs and I still do miss the old one. But I'd rather have Road Atlanta there in today's config instead of having it being by another subdivision (RIP, Texas World Speedway, Riverside, Ontario, ad nausea).

Get out there and drive it while you can.

Edit: if you'd like to see what The Dip looked like, here's some old in-car VHS video I converted from the 1991 Runoffs. It's crappy quality, but...it was 1991.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVyg1rQ9Avk&list=PLFpIfMQeIqT5Q4wKLOqvlIhGVPcyAUKhg&ab_channel=GregAmy