HAMPTON, Ga. -- On paper, Atlanta Motor Speedway is a drafting-style track akin to Daytona or Talladega. In practice, the surface continuing to age only creates questions among the Cup Series drivers preparing for Sunday afternoon's race.
Will the playoff opener continue to be like a superspeedway race, or will it move closer to an intermediate event?
"This place is kind of coming into its own," Josh Berry said in response to a question from AltDriver.
"I feel like over the next few years as it continues to age a little bit and lose some grip, it'll be really interesting to see how it plays out into kind of a hybrid between a superspeedway pack race and an intermediate track."
The first few races at Atlanta after the reconfiguration were fairly straightforward. Drivers could race together in the pack while using two lanes. Being able to push and receive pushes was crucial to achieving success.
Now, however, the drivers and teams have to strike a balance. They can no longer simply think about drafting. They have to worry far more about handling. Not that they are complaining.
"I think that's good (that it's) kind of turning into a more handling race," Ryan Blaney said. "I think that makes it a little bit trickier when you have something like that because it's a conversation every time we come back here.
"It's like, 'Alright, well, how much downforce do we want to put in it? We can't run it the same that we did a year ago just because it's lost that much grip.' And handling seems to be a little bit more important. So I think it's good. Hopefully, it continues to lose more grip."
At this point, racing at Talladega and Daytona is more predictable for drivers in 2024. The two tracks underwent repaves many years ago -- Talladega in 2006 and Daytona in 2010. NASCAR has held several races at these tracks over the years while teams have built massive notebooks.
These teams and drivers just know what to expect, especially after several races with the Next Gen car.
Atlanta, for comparison, was an intermediate track until the summer of 2021. Speedway Motorsports and NASCAR then reconfigured the 1.540-mile track into a mini-superspeedway.
Teams have since competed on the new configuration five times while adapting to decreasing grip and handling changes. Nothing remains the same, which forces the teams and drivers to just keep making changes so they aren't showing up with the wrong setups.
"We just have to continue to evolve with the new Atlanta," William Byron added. "I don't think until we get eight, nine, 10 years down the road will we really know what this place takes and kind of what it evolves into."