Around the Track: Atlanta

This week, Jeff Burton addresses why Atlanta Motor Speedway is dauntingly fast and extremely taxing on man and machine.

When you're making a lap of Atlanta Motor Speedway, you try to catch your breath on the front straightaway, because you're about to head into one of the fastest corners in all of motorsports.

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Turn 1 has a lot of banking and it's very fast. You can use a lot of different grooves in this corner. A lot of cars run on the bottom, but a lot of cars also run up near the wall.

When you turn-in to Turn 1, you hope that your car doesn't want to come around on you. You want it to be real stable, as cars tend to be real loose turning into the corners at Atlanta.

You've got to have a car that will turn real well in the corner, so sometimes you get it to where it's too free turning-into the corners.

You try to get your car to turn real well as you come off of Turn 2 to head down the back straightaway, and it's real easy to spin your rear wheels coming off that second corner.

Turn 3 is another corner in which you can use a number of grooves, but most people run right on the bottom. You are on the gas extremely quickly in this corner to carry as much speed as you can into, and through Turn 4.

You have to be real careful coming up off Turn 4 because it gets real tight there and it's real easy to hit the wall.

Once you've qualified, I think Atlanta has the biggest difference from qualifying to racing than anywhere we go. When you drive that car in qualifying, it is so wide-open -- it's unbelievable what it feels like -- and everybody will be right on the bottom.

Then in race trim it's just like any other racetrack -- it's just that you have all of these different grooves. You can run on the top, you can run on the bottom or you can run in the middle.

It's just a lot of fun to race at Atlanta because when the race starts, you can run all the way from that white line on the bottom all the way up to the wall.

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In the past, I know I have said that it's almost like Atlanta has multiple personalities -- and here's what I meant by that.

When you are qualifying at Atlanta, it almost has the personality of Bristol. I know this sounds crazy, but it is so ridiculously fast in qualifying trim that it feels like that.

Once you get into race trim, though, it turns into Darlington. I mean, the track surface gets slick and you can run on the top or run on the bottom. It's the biggest change between the two disciplines than anyplace we go.

Finding the right groove to race in at Atlanta can be a challenge.

You've got to just keep looking, but most of all you have to be willing to go searching to find that groove that will work for you.

Experience teaches you that when your car is reacting a certain way that you can try something different and have faith to try it.

The reason we don't have a lot of multiple grooves at some racetracks is that if you go high you'll wreck. At Atlanta you have to have faith that the racetrack will hold you.

In Turns 1 and 2 at Atlanta, you run as close to the wall as you do at Darlington.

Then, Turns 3 and 4 we still run on the bottom, but it's just having that faith that the track will hold you.

Jeff Burton, driver of the No. 31 Cingular Chevrolet, will take fans Around the Track each race week during the 2005 Nextel Cup season.