The following is an excerpt from the November, 1970 issue of SportsCar Magazine when Road Atlanta had just been opened:

SCCA's annual colossal fandango, the American Road Race of Champions, will take place not only at a new ARRC course but at a new-in-1970 course that very few drivers will have driven before the event. Bob Sharp is a very active production car driver, a former national champion, and he drove both his CP and DP Datsuns in the inaugural, regional event at Road Atlanta in August. Here, for the benefit of ARRC competitors, he analyzes the course in an interview with Sports Car staffer Tony Muldoon.

SportsCar: Can you tell the Formula Vee, McLaren/Chevy and Camaro drivers what you think of Road Atlanta and how you drive it?

Bob: Well, I'll tell you. I would say that Road Atlanta course is comparable to quite a few of the fast courses such as Elkhart, Riverside, Bridgehampton or Watkins Glen. It is a fast-handling, driver's course. However, there are about three second-gear type corners. I think it's a very interesting, demanding course. The straightaway is a very peculiar one.

SportsCar: Is it the only real straight?

Bob: Yes. It's fairly flat, I would say, for about the first two-thirds and then it goes quite drastically downhill and then back uphill again. So you'd be towards the top end gaining quite a bit of speed in the last, oh say, city block of the straightaway and then breaking while going uphill — going over the hill into a pretty fast righthander.

SportsCar: What about gears?

Bob: I would say you should be geared for any of the real fast courses. A fairly long gear is required to not over-rev during that downhill portion.

SportsCar: Any peculiarities of the road surface? Anything that would favor recommendations of tires?

Bob: I can't think of any specifics. The course has quite a few semi-blind apex corners so it does take a little bit of getting used to what is the proper line.

SportsCar: Now that you mention the proper line, let's go around the course, turn by turn, again bearing in mind that we're speaking in a very broad sense.

Bob: Turn one is a fairly fast, flat right hand uphill corner. Turn two is more or less a kink in the course. Turn three is a lot tighter than it appears on the map and is really a very slow corner.

SportsCar: What gear do you have the Datsun in on turn one?

Bob: Turn one would probably be a high third-gear corner in a normal transmission, and I'll go through these turns assuming a 4-speed transmission. Most of the fellows will be running high up in third gear, going up one into fourth, and then back down to second for turn three. Turn three is one of the real tough points on the course. It's a blind, over-the-hill, deceiving apex corner and you have to start turning before you can start to see the corner. By the time you do see the corner, you're too far out in left field and headed to go straight off the course.

From there, it's pretty much an acceleration downhill to the lefthander between three and four and, depending upon the speed of the car, either flat out or slightly braking with a little trailing throttle through the series between four and five. Then five—a much slower corner than it appears on the map and another place to make a mistake. Three, five and seven are your three quite slow corners. I would say five is a second-gear corner.

SportsCar: Is there much sliding in there?

Bob: Yes, the whole thing is pretty much a drift, from three through to five. There are short little straightaways in it, but it is more or less a very fast slalom. Turn five is the view that a lot of the ARRC entrants would be familiar with. It was in Comp Press. The picture is at five looking back at four, so you'd be coming towards turn five: Under full acceleration and then really slowing the car down for turn five to get a smooth approach onto the uphill straight going toward six.

SportsCar: What happens when you get to six?

Bob:You're going at a pretty fast speed between five and six and you have to slow down quite a bit. You may be fairly high up in second gear, accelerating through six, winding up for seven. Although it looks like a bit of a straightaway between six and seven, there really isn't too much. Turn seven is the tightest turn on the course and it is onto the straight. However, the course is fairly wide there so it's not quite as tight as it appears on the map. It's not an acute corner. It's pretty much a 90-degree corner with a fairly wide course, and I would say it's probably a 40 to 50 mile an hour corner onto the straightaway. The whole course is nice and wide, by the way: a minimum of 32 feet.

The straightaway is a bending straightaway, fairly wide yet a little bit difficult to pass on for a straightaway because it is bending. Slightly after number 9 on the map, the course goes drastically downhill to a point about halfway between nine and ten. After going down in the gully you start going uphill to turn 10, then have to break on the uphill. Under the bridge, this is again a blind apex corner. You have to set up your line before you can actually see the apex. You come over the hill just after the bridge, and it's very easy to be more or less off into the pit lane. In other words, too far to the left. Remember, both the pit lane and the course are sharply downhill. So, you have to set up before the bridge for an apex that you really can't see and then come through that and your right next to pit lane. Someone out of shape could come rocketing down the pit lane without any hope of getting back on the course. He'd have to continue down pit lane under severe deceleration, make a sharp, narrow, right-hand turn, and then proceed through the pits proper to get back to the race. I understand this may be remedied before the ARRC so that guys can't get too far left under the bridge.

SportsCar: Where are the places to pass on this course?

Bob:I think it's a rather difficult passing course. Passing can be done during braking coming into any of the corners. The straight in front of the pits would be a pretty good place for passing. The straight between turns five and six is a pretty decent straightaway; and the main straightaway, even though it's a bending straight, is definitely an opportunity for passing.

SportsCar: When you were talking your way around the course, you said the long straight was a difficult place to pass.

Bob: Well, you're flat out and trying to straighten out the bending course. A driver would go from left to right, left to right, three or four times down the straightaway, keeping in a straight line, not counting the traffic. The downhill at the end of the straightaway is really a corner at quite high speed, although it appears as just a little wag on the map. At top speed it really is a corner and although I think two cars could probably go through it abreast, it is a little bit tricky.

SportsCar: What about drafting?

Bob:You know, I think down that straightaway would be an ideal drafting situation. The other problem we ran into—and again I believe this might be remedied before the ARRC-was that the edges of the course were not sandy, but dusty with typical red Georgia soil. This made the straightaway a little more difficult to pass on because once you got out of the line, it was a little more slippery than in the line. Again, I don't know what they are doing for the ARRC, but it's the kind of course whose cars can pretty easily throw up quite a bit of dirt onto the course. All of a sudden, it can be a pretty slick condition.

SportsCar: Are there any dangerous parts of the track where you can really get into trouble?

Bob: Well, I think the course is beautifully laid out and I think there's quite a bit of area if you do go off. However, the course is very deceiving. Any of the corners where you have to set up a line before you see the apex is going to be a rude awakening. It is easy to put the car into the corner too fast because you can't really see the apex. You take it further away than it is. Turn three; turn five you really have to slow down for; and turn 10 by the bridge, very deceiving, a very fast corner.

SportsCar: How did you find the facilities on the track - the pits and paddock and so forth?

Bob: We found the facilities beautifully done. I think they've done a fantastic job with the course. One of the problems that we ran into was that the paddock was quite small but I understand that they're going to double the size of it before the ARRC. The only hard objection we felt was coming down the straightaway with a car going into the pits right in the line that you'd want to take. If you didn't take a late apex as you should, if you started into the corner a little too early, the tendency would be to drift into the road into the pits which was at that time only marked by a painted line. So, it was natural to use the pit road as part of the course, and if you encountered a car crawling into the pits, I think it might present a problem.

SportsCar: What about the pit exit? As you know Peter Gethin got into a bit of trouble going out of there a little too quickly. Does that present any danger?

Bob:Yes, it does. It can be a problem. Driving down that straightaway from 11 to one, you have to be alert to a car coming out of the pits because your line is over to the far left, right where a car coming out of the pits would come in front of you. However, you can see really well, and a car coming out of the pits should stay far left, not cut across to the right. Again, these were things brought up by quite a few of us to the track people and I think they had a couple of ideas for remedying both pit-in and pit-out.

SportsCar: In the Can-Am this year, they used the pop-up signal flag—and they expect to have signal lights for the ARRC. How's the visibility at the flag stations?

Bob: The visibility is pretty good. One of the things that I thought would help was that on the two or three blind apex corners, painting some lines as they've done at turn even at Riverside would give a driver a little more of a point to align himself so he'd know roughly how far he is from the apex. When we were there, they hadn't had a chance to put up the different yardage markers to the apexes, but we saw the signs that were about to go up and I'm sure it will be quite a bit better marked for the American Road Race of Champions. Also, bent arrow signs to show which way the course goes would be a good idea.

SportsCar: What's your parting advice to guys that are going to be there for the first time?

Bob: Well, I think it's very much the kind of a course where an over-anxious driver can do himself in on the first lap. Trying to stuff the car into a corner too quickly, finding himself off in the loose dirt, and after a slide, guard rail or red dirt embankment to collect him. I think it is a fast, demanding course that requires not overdoing it.

Pictured: Following the 1970 ARRC, these drivers claimed the 22 Championships. Skip Barber claimed the President’s Cup thanks to his victories in Formula B and Formula Ford.