Dale Earnhardt Jr. recently expressed his thoughts on the future of Atlanta Motor Speedway, the home track of Georgia native Chase Elliott.
The track underwent a significant reconfiguration between 2021 and 2022 and hosted its first playoff race last weekend.
Following the recent playoff event, several drivers observed that the racing conditions were different and more challenging, a sentiment Dale Earnhardt Jr. echoed on his podcast “Dale Jr. Download.”
“Atlanta has changed and will continue to change drastically. Listening to Denny Hamlin talk about Atlanta on his show, he mentions how slick the track was, how much of a handful the car was. The pace was down almost half a second from last year.
Chase Elliott said during the race that the cars are so loose, nobody can go at the top and do anything… It’s heading towards that old, worn-out, slick Atlanta that we had before. And we’ll get there very quickly,” Junior commented [at 7:30].
Dale Earnhardt Jr. compared the track to being near the coast and discussed environmental factors affecting its condition, suggesting that the sandy soil around the track, combined with windy weather, “sandblasts” nearby surfaces, including the track itself.
Dale Earnhardt Jr. Critiques the Labeling of Atlanta as a Superspeedway
Continuing his discussion on Atlanta, Dale Earnhardt Jr. argued that it shouldn’t be classified as a superspeedway like Talladega or Daytona. Describing the track as a ‘hybrid,’ he felt it was unfair to group it with these tracks. He said during the same “Dale Jr. Download” episode:
“Talladega and Daytona are superspeedways; the rest are just speedways. NASCAR and NBC would like to claim they are the same type of track.
What really annoys me is that terms like short track, intermediate, one-mile oval are straightforward. Superspeedway adhered strictly to a size, not just loosely defined terms. It’s not a Superspeedway,” said Dale Earnhardt Jr. [10:55].
Commenting on the loose criteria for categorizing tracks, Earnhardt noted that only Daytona and Talladega, being 2 miles or larger, are true superspeedways, while the rest are “simply speedways.”
The former Hendrick Motorsports driver further mentioned the term “drafting track,” which was used to describe the racing style at the repaved Atlanta track. He criticized the term, calling it “annoying” when used to predict drivers’ performances in Atlanta based on statistics from Talladega and Daytona.
