Every once in a while someone picks the scab that is "Why did Road Atlanta get rid of The Dip?" and more hilarity ensues.
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 bit 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 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 breathtaking as that sentence was intended to make it sound and as roller-coastery as you can ever get without being attached to some rails, certainly as you can ever get in a race car. The Dip was adored by any racers that dared challenge it.
Go to Google Maps and check out the satellite view of the track. Road Atlanta appears to be mostly in the middle of Nowhere, Georgia; in the 70s, 80s, and 90s it actually was in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by agriculture country (there used to be a chicken farm within "nose-sight" of the track). But today that space is being encroached by the expansion of Metro Atlanta suburbia (and I think the chicken farm is gone).
In 1996, the track was purchased by Don Panoz. Panoz (R.I.P. 2018) was a pharma wiz that made his fortune developing the trans-dermal patch. Soon he got interested in cars and racing (including development of his own protoype race cars).
Because of this encroaching suburbia, the track's future was in question. To ensure the track's survival, Panoz had to do something to get big events there, the kind of big somethings 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, especially when competing with rising farmland values getting turned into tract houses. Panoz's answer was FIA-sanctioned events, with FIA-sanctioned cars, crews, and big money equipment (read: many tractor trailers).
But still, why take out such a signature characteristic of the track? In my opinion, reason for the changes was two-fold: paddock space and safety.
The original paddock was insufficient for major sanctioning bodies bringing in lot of crews and equipment in a lot of big trailers (and wanting to spread out). I remember back in the days of the SCCA Runoffs (way before amateur racers were arriving in tractor trailers) that getting a good paddock spot was a game of Tetris and you had to be real familiar with your paddock mate neighbors. Most of us cheap screws might have gotten space in the skidpad but a lot of us weren't even on pavement; we were, literally, paddocked out in the weeds (I usually ended up in the kudzu outside T1...hell, one year we parked our open trailer near the edge 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 (an excellent spectator spot) and build below it a new "pro paddock" with its own pit entry and exit on that side of the track.
But if you were planning to carve back the hill overlooking the front straight to install a new paddock, how would you get trucks and trailers over there? You're not going to send them over that small T11 bridge, it's just too tight and would likely require re-engineering/replacing that bridge. Plus, it would create a lot of conflicting traffic with spectator crowds. I suppose you could have brought trucks in via the old Howington Road access, but I don't know if the track even still owned that property then. Or maybe through the new area that was created to the east/northeast (behind Turn 1 where the companies are now, it was unused land). But either way you'd still need to build a bridge/tunnel across the track to get to the infield.
Or...you can cross The Dip with an access road to the infield and fill over that, raising the track surface. Which is what he did. This large tunnel provided tractor-trailer access to the then-new inner "Pro" paddock.
As for the safety aspect, well, cars were literally flying along that back straight even without the Dip. Prototypes were getting airborne at a sharp-ish crest halfway or so down and the speeds they were attaining by the end of the straight were incredible (there were some pretty gnarly crashes). That mile-long, unrestricted back straight was 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 - and FIA inspectors - probably said "nope" (recall this was only a couple years after Senna's crash) -- so something had to be done.
So along with the loss of 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, backed up by a large sand/gravel trap. These two changes - removing the Dip and adding the chicane - emasculated one of (if not "the") signature characteristics of the track (though one can legit argue that T12 through T6 are some excellent trackage experiences).
Was that necessary? I mean, I don't personally recall a lot of complaints about safety of the track back in the day -- but then again I wasn't driving prototype race cars. We did lose an SCCA member after the Bridge one year (RIP Scott) but that was an open-wheel incident and I don't think it was because of the Dip; 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).
But I also don't recall a lot of complaints about racing without certified closed-face helmets, three-layer fire suits, full rollcages, and head and neck restraints...yet we require them today (and I suggest none of us would do this today without that).
So add up the need for more paddock space, a means of accessing it, and the desire to slow the cars down on the back straight...and removal of The Dip was inevitable. I don't think the decision was taken lightly, but it was a necessary evil to ensure the track's survival.
I'd further suggest that, but for these requirements, The Dip could still exist. 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.
Those who drove the original config still 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 expecting that Don Panoz probably had to justify this desecration to St Peter himself when he arrived.
But what's done is done, and it shall never go back.
I've raced Road Atlanta several times since then, and the place still feels like home. When I drive through the gate and see that glorious hillside I get all warm and fuzzy (same with driving into Hallett Motor Speedway).
And I confess that while "19-yr-old Greg" got a lot of delight at driving through the Dip and shooting for that hole through the bridge at speed, "Today Greg" would probably look at it quite differently.
If you want to touch the old Dip today, just walk over to the access tunnel under the track: 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 do miss the old config. But I'll take today's Road Atlanta versus it being torn down to become another subdivision or a shopping mall (RIP Texas World Speedway, Riverside, Ontario, ad nausea).
Get out there and drive it while you can.
And if you'd like to see what The Dip looked like inside the car, here's some old in-car VHS video I converted from the 1991 Runoffs. It's crappy quality, but hey, it was 1991.
An excellent piece. I was fortunate to drive some track weekends in the early nineties in my lightly modified 12a Rx7.
ReplyDeleteIt was a magical experience, and I was just wondering when the dip was changed, stumbled onto your blog.
Thanks for the work, have fun.