SMI President’s Wisdom Questioned as Fans Demand Return of Historic NASCAR Track

Facing major backlash for repaving one of the oldest surfaces in NASCAR, Speedway Motorports Inc.’s Atlanta venture turned out to be a massive success. SMI president, Marcus Smith, had chosen to revamp the cracked and dilapidated surface of the Atlanta Motor Speedway in 2021, giving rise to controversy and abundant backlash.

While the Atlanta Motor Speedway enjoyed a successful second-year revamp run last weekend, fans are now demanding the return of another historic NASCAR track to its former glory.

How did SMI manage to successfully revamp the Atlanta Motor Speedway? 

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Acquired by SMI in 1990, the Atlanta Motor Speedway’s first repavement came in 1997. Bringing the oval up to intermediate track standards, SMI changed the track to a quad-oval, also swapping out both the front and backstretch. Untouched for more than two decades, the Speedway’s surface deteriorated, cracking up in various spots.

Filling up the cracks with tar served as a temporary solution, warranting a repavement. Digging tons of earth and stirring controversy in equal measure, on July 11th, 2021, SMI commenced its Atlanta repaving project. Scraping off the old track, SMI introduced a plethora of changes. Updating the track, SMI shortened the corner width from 55 to 40 feet. Increasing the banking angle from 24 to 28 degrees, SMI turned the Atlanta Motor Speedway into America’s most steeply banked circuit.

With the changes in place, racing in Atlanta is now quite like racing on Superspeedways with restrictor plates. Two season worth of NASCAR races have now been successfully completed at the rebuilt track, and Sportsnaut’s Matt Weaver feels many owe SMI president Marcus Smith an apology.

As the SMI president faced a hard time in the past for choosing to repave Atlanta, Matt Weaver wrote on Twitter, “Stray thought before bedtime: A lot of us might owe @MarcusSMI an apology about the reconfiguration and specifically a pavement he said is meant to age fast. It didn’t make sense to a lot of folks. This is becoming a unique and challenging stop on the tour.”

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As Matt Weaver posted his thoughts on Twitter, fans quickly pointed out how SMI’s rework of the Texas Motor Speedway had ruined the historic track. Displeased with the 2017 re-profiling that saw the track drop from 24 degrees to 20 degrees in banking angle and Turn 1 and 2 widths increased from 60 to 80 feet, fans demanded the Texas track be reinstated to its former glory.

NASCAR fans wish it were Texas Motor Speedway that got revamped

Matt Weavers “bedtime” tweet quickly hit Reddit threads, and fans expressed their wishes to see Texas Motor Speedway receive the “Atlanta update.” Commenting on NASCAR’s subreddit, one fan wrote, “Yeah the longview of this is easily that this should have been done at Texas and Atlanta shoudlve gotten a simple repave.” 

Expressing how SMI ruined the Texas track, another fan commented, “I can’t wait till they tear down Texas and try again. Such a garbage track lmao”. Here are some more comments from disheartened fans.

Stray thought before bedtime: A lot of us might owe @MarcusSMI an apology about the reconfiguration and specifically a pavement he said is meant to age fast. It didn’t make sense to a lot of folks. This is becoming a unique and challenging stop on the tour.

— Matt Weaver (@MattWeaverRA) July 10, 2023

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“It’s hilarious to remember this same company repaved Texas into complete shit so much so that we got basically a whole new Atlanta out of it”

“I still think it should’ve been Texas and not Atlanta, but clearly Marcus Smith is committed and gung-ho about it sticking around somehow.”

“I still think if you just repaved and reconfigured Texas back to what it was prior to 2017, you would have a good track”

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Will Marcus Smith listen to the fans’ demand to rework the Texas Motor Speedway? Stay connected to find out!

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