by Mike Fuori on Sunday, August 21, 2011 at 12:57pm ·
#14: The Old Days- AMS when it was AIR
As you hopefully read in the first of my stories, our first race at Atlanta Motor Speedway was in 1985, only back then it was still called Atlanta International Raceway. The track property was completely different back then, and in fact, especially thanks to a tornado that hit the speedway in 2005, it’s hard to find many structures today that existed 25 years ago. The track itself is completely different now, with the start finish line on the opposite straightaway, and two dog legs added to make it a quad-oval. Back then it was a plain oval, with long sweeping turns and relatively short straightaways. Drivers used to say you almost never stopped turning the wheel there because the straightaways were so short.
The track I remember from the ‘80s had a red and white striped wall which for some reason always looked cool to me. Especially on TV, it seemed to have a nice effect that added to the speed of the cars as the camera followed them… you could see the blur of the colors on the wall in the background. I wish today’s tracks still had them. The other thing different about the walls was that except for where there were grandstands (basically only the straightaways), there was no catch fence on the walls, allowing cars to actually jump the walls and tumble outside of the track in some of the worst crashes. Before the races, I remember watching from the infield as fans would head to their seats, walking along the backside of the walls to the stands, and some of them hopping over the wall to experience the 24-degree banking in the turns. We even remember seeing people ride up the hill to the walls on horseback.
There used to be billboards in the old turn 2 (now turn 4), and a “76 ball”. Unocal 76 was the official gasoline of NASCAR back then, and if you remember the gas stations their signs were an orange circle with a white number 76 inside. The 76 ball, as we called it, had an opening in the front under the numbers and served as a spotter stand, and was a common sight at NASCAR tracks. And there were trees lining the track outside the walls.
What still remains since the first time we went to a race there is a press box, which sits outside the wall at the entrance of turn 3, and usually has a network TV camera on the roof during the races for a good view of the backstretch and the turn, and even occasionally us standing on our platforms up against the fence in the infield.
I remember as a little kid seeing a huge dust devil one year between the backstretch grandstands and the trees and thinking it was a tornado. The track property was not the impressively landscaped monstrosity it is now. There was a lot of dirt and very little grass. I used to use an ice scraper to dig out my own racetrack in the dirt in the infield, banked turns and all, and have my own races with my Matchbox cars. One year a reporter from the Marietta Daily Journal took my picture during one of these Matchbox races and put me in the newspaper. I was actually upset when they started growing grass there because the dirt made for much easier racetrack building.
But the clay ground in the infield meant an absolute mess when it rained. After a while, before the track ramped up their landscaping efforts, we actually laid our own grass seed in our reserved spots at the March race, and would come back in November to a nice green lawn and no mud!
In my opinion, the racers and the cars were much tougher back then. But despite what a lot of people say, the racing was not better back then… at least most of the time. Sure, the cars were tougher to handle, and like I said the drivers were grittier, but you don’t have to dig too deep in the statistics to find races in the 80’s when there were only a handful of drivers on the lead lap. In fact, I know of at least one in the ‘80s when Dale Earnhardt was more than a full lap ahead of second place when he took the checkers. Today is a totally different story. There are times when drivers will get a big lead, but it almost always ends up being erased before the end, and most of the best and closest finishes we’ve seen have been in the last ten years.
The newer and improved Atlanta Motor Speedway is simply a sight to behold. In fact, just driving up to the track and seeing it in the distance is one of my favorite parts of race weekend. But I do have to say that every time I go to a race there, I can’t help but picture the track when we saw it the first time.
As you hopefully read in the first of my stories, our first race at Atlanta Motor Speedway was in 1985, only back then it was still called Atlanta International Raceway. The track property was completely different back then, and in fact, especially thanks to a tornado that hit the speedway in 2005, it’s hard to find many structures today that existed 25 years ago. The track itself is completely different now, with the start finish line on the opposite straightaway, and two dog legs added to make it a quad-oval. Back then it was a plain oval, with long sweeping turns and relatively short straightaways. Drivers used to say you almost never stopped turning the wheel there because the straightaways were so short.
The track I remember from the ‘80s had a red and white striped wall which for some reason always looked cool to me. Especially on TV, it seemed to have a nice effect that added to the speed of the cars as the camera followed them… you could see the blur of the colors on the wall in the background. I wish today’s tracks still had them. The other thing different about the walls was that except for where there were grandstands (basically only the straightaways), there was no catch fence on the walls, allowing cars to actually jump the walls and tumble outside of the track in some of the worst crashes. Before the races, I remember watching from the infield as fans would head to their seats, walking along the backside of the walls to the stands, and some of them hopping over the wall to experience the 24-degree banking in the turns. We even remember seeing people ride up the hill to the walls on horseback.
Note the people on horseback behind the wall
There used to be billboards in the old turn 2 (now turn 4), and a “76 ball”. Unocal 76 was the official gasoline of NASCAR back then, and if you remember the gas stations their signs were an orange circle with a white number 76 inside. The 76 ball, as we called it, had an opening in the front under the numbers and served as a spotter stand, and was a common sight at NASCAR tracks. And there were trees lining the track outside the walls.
Bill Elliott battles Rusty Wallace
What still remains since the first time we went to a race there is a press box, which sits outside the wall at the entrance of turn 3, and usually has a network TV camera on the roof during the races for a good view of the backstretch and the turn, and even occasionally us standing on our platforms up against the fence in the infield.
I remember as a little kid seeing a huge dust devil one year between the backstretch grandstands and the trees and thinking it was a tornado. The track property was not the impressively landscaped monstrosity it is now. There was a lot of dirt and very little grass. I used to use an ice scraper to dig out my own racetrack in the dirt in the infield, banked turns and all, and have my own races with my Matchbox cars. One year a reporter from the Marietta Daily Journal took my picture during one of these Matchbox races and put me in the newspaper. I was actually upset when they started growing grass there because the dirt made for much easier racetrack building.
From the looks of it, this was me racing my matchbox cars at a scale version of Darlington!
But the clay ground in the infield meant an absolute mess when it rained. After a while, before the track ramped up their landscaping efforts, we actually laid our own grass seed in our reserved spots at the March race, and would come back in November to a nice green lawn and no mud!
In my opinion, the racers and the cars were much tougher back then. But despite what a lot of people say, the racing was not better back then… at least most of the time. Sure, the cars were tougher to handle, and like I said the drivers were grittier, but you don’t have to dig too deep in the statistics to find races in the 80’s when there were only a handful of drivers on the lead lap. In fact, I know of at least one in the ‘80s when Dale Earnhardt was more than a full lap ahead of second place when he took the checkers. Today is a totally different story. There are times when drivers will get a big lead, but it almost always ends up being erased before the end, and most of the best and closest finishes we’ve seen have been in the last ten years.
The newer and improved Atlanta Motor Speedway is simply a sight to behold. In fact, just driving up to the track and seeing it in the distance is one of my favorite parts of race weekend. But I do have to say that every time I go to a race there, I can’t help but picture the track when we saw it the first time.
Three of the best ever at Atlanta
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