Road Atlanta is the fastest circuit visited by this year’s ALMS calendar. The top prototypes cover the lap in about 1m07s. LeMansLive had a chance to sample the track this morning…

The Esses at Road Atlanta

Road Atlanta is quite hard to describe. The track is fairly hilly and the start/finish straight runs along the bottom of a small valley before the steep climb that begins through Turn 1 and takes drivers up to a left-right kink at the top of the hill.

Next up are the quick, downhill esses which take them out to the back end of the circuit The portion that then brings the cars back towards the pits is made up of long straights and two fast, sweeping corners which feed into an uphill chicane. After that the cars tackle a 300m downhill straight which ends with the practically flat-out bumpy right-hander (Turn 12).

The average lap speed is 220kph, with peaks reaching almost 300kph in the case of the LMP1 runners. The impressive descent to the finish sees the cars reach around 250kph ahead of the fifth-gear Turn 12, which has a wall just five metres off the track as the ‘catchment’ area!

“Yannick Dalmas took off down this hill in 1998,” remembers Michelin technician Vincent. “There was no chicane before this straight in those days and they used to take the crest almost flat out. His car lost its downforce and he performed a high-speed sloop through the air.

The drivers are subject to lateral g-forces of up to 4g through Turn 1. The right foot is hard to the floor for practically four-fifths of the lap, and the brakes are only employed on six occasions… if all goes well.

circuit, Petit Le Mans