Can you believe that it’s the final already?! Time flies when you’re having fun… So, for the finale of Season Three, our Sim Racers head state-side to the legendary Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta.
What was once a farmer’s field became a world class motorsports facility, nestled in the red-earth hill country 35 miles north of Atlanta. The 2.54-mile hill-and-dale 12-turn circuit has been described as a “rollercoaster for road-racing drivers” and promises to challenge even the most competent of racers.
From the day the track opened in the fall of 1970, drivers have found themselves alternately mesmerized and terrified by the serpentine rhythms of this challenging race track.
A single lap begins with a gut-sucking very fast uphill right-hand sweeper, followed by a left-hander over the crest of a hill, and right into the downhill and uphill combination called the Esses. Then a brief downhill straightaway, followed by the banked 90-degree fast Turn 6 and almost immediate hard braking for the slowest, tightest corner on the course. Turn 7 leads onto the so-called back straight, which actually wends its pedal-to-the-metal way right and left and up over a crest and then down a hill.
A gentle right followed by a sharp left-right chicane were added in 1996, eliminating perhaps the scariest few hundred feet of pavement in North America: Road Atlanta’s notorious “dip,” a suspension-bottoming down-and-up taken by really fast cars at nearly 200 mph . . . which was followed by hard braking up a hill and through the thread-the-needle, blind-apex, under-the-bridge Turn 11, which is today negotiated under slightly less frenetic circumstances. But the fast downhill run through the sweeping right-hand Turn 12 onto the pit straight is just as hair-raising as it ever was.
There couldn’t be a more fitting venue for the PCGB Sim Racing Championships – the jury is out… which of our Sim Racers do you think will be crowned as the Season Three Club Class Champion?
Make sure you tune in from 7:30pm on Wednesday, June 2 for the final races of the season – don’t miss out!
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Photo by Gilles Gardner.