Atlanta, Georgia:
Where Racing Has Deep Roots
Long before NASCAR was an organization, before superspeedways existed, before sponsorship dollars and television contracts, there were the mountain roads of north Georgia — and the men who ran them. Atlanta's automotive heritage doesn't begin in a boardroom or a factory. It begins with a modified Ford on a dirt road, loaded with moonshine, with the law in the rearview mirror. Those drivers didn't just outrun the revenuers. They invented American stock car racing.
"Raymond Parks financed. Red Vogt built the engines. Roy Hall and Lloyd Seay drove. And in the late 1930s, that Georgia crew was unbeatable — on the road and on the track."
In 1938, a Dawsonville, Georgia moonshine runner named Raymond Parks began bankrolling his cousins Roy Hall and Lloyd Seay — both legendary for outrunning federal agents through the north Georgia hills — with purpose-built race cars prepared by Atlanta mechanic Red Vogt. The trio dominated the southeastern stock car scene almost immediately. It was Vogt, working out of his Atlanta garage, who is credited with coining the name "NASCAR" when Bill France Sr. was organizing the sport in 1947. Georgia's influence on the founding of NASCAR was total — from the drivers who proved cars could be pushed to their limits, to the mechanic who gave the organization its name.
The sport's Georgia roots run even deeper. Bill Elliott — "Awesome Bill from Dawsonville" — became one of NASCAR's most beloved champions, winning 44 Cup races including the 1988 Winston Cup championship. He still holds the all-time record for the fastest qualifying lap in NASCAR history, set at Talladega in 1987 at 212.809 mph. His son Chase Elliott, also from Dawsonville, won the 2020 NASCAR Cup Series championship, making the Elliotts the only Georgia-born father-son duo to both win NASCAR's top title. Every time either Elliott wins, the old siren at the Dawsonville Pool Room still blares — no matter the hour.
Atlanta Motor Speedway opened in 1960 in Hampton, just south of the city, and has been one of NASCAR's crown jewels ever since. Originally known as Atlanta International Raceway, the 1.54-mile trioval has hosted legends from Richard Petty to Dale Earnhardt to Jeff Gordon. A major renovation in 2022 reconfigured the track to a high-banked superspeedway format modeled after Daytona, producing side-by-side racing at over 200 mph and instantly making it one of the most exciting venues on the Cup Series calendar. Road Atlanta in nearby Braselton has served since 1970 as one of America's premier road racing circuits, hosting IMSA, Petit Le Mans, and the beloved Classic Motorsports Mitty — the largest classic automobile racing event on the East Coast, running every spring since 1977.
Modern Atlanta has added a new dimension to its automotive identity. The Porsche Experience Center Atlanta — headquartered at One Porsche Drive in Hapeville, the North American HQ for Porsche Cars — opened in 2015 and has welcomed over 400,000 visitors since. A $50 million expansion in 2023 added a second driver development track designed by world-renowned track architect Tilke, featuring elements inspired by the Nürburgring, Daytona, and Laguna Seca. The facility is part museum, part driving school, part fine dining destination — and a fitting symbol of how Atlanta's car culture has grown from moonshine runners to Porsches without ever losing its passion for what happens when a great driver meets a great machine.
