Dr. Diandra: What makes reconfigured, repaved Atlanta a Superspeedway?

Atlanta Motor Speedway got a 163-day facelift during the off-season. Its corners were taken in a bit, its frontstretch was stretched and it had a banking augmentation. The 1.5-mile track that used to be teased as ‘cookie cutter’ (even though it really wasn’t) is the first high-banked 1.5-mile oval in NASCAR.

And it’s expected to race like a superspeedway.

A few years ago, the track’s deteriorating surface condition hinted that a repave would be unavoidable. That opened the door for discussions about what changes made sense. Steve Swift, senior vice president of operations and development at Speedway Motorsports, oversaw Atlanta’s reconfiguration.

“Uniqueness,” Swift said, “isn’t enough. What do we have as a company? What does the sport need?”

Speedway Motorsports already had four other 1.5-mile tracks: Charlotte, Kentucky, Las Vegas and Texas, as well as shorter ovals and road courses. What they didn’t have was a superspeedway like Daytona or Talladega.

“No one’s ever made a 1.5-mile oval with banking substantially over 24 degrees before,” Swift noted.

Reconfiguring a track, especially one as beloved by drivers at Atlanta, is a risky proposition, and that’s before attempting to do something brand new to NASCAR. Ten months of computer simulations helped mitigate that risk.

“iRacing offered to help,” Swift says. “The great part is that you can change things prior to spending a lot of money and putting it out there.”

The simulations confirmed Speedway Motorsports’ goals for the new Atlanta.

“We ran the numbers, and the track we had designed replicated superspeedway racing,” Swift said.

Nick Fishbein, head of GM Racing’s Performance Engineering Group, draws the threshold for a ‘superspeedway’ using what engineers call the