FIRST PERSON/OPINION By Kris Turner WERA #38 I’m sure everyone knows about the changes to the historic Road Atlanta course by now. Many of the vets are left wondering why ruin the track after taking the dip or “Gravity Cavity” out of the back straight. Then more recently the new Turn Three. Is it even the same track with the even more recent changes to the Esses and Turn 12? I was a little antsy showing up for a track day before last weekend’s WERA Regional weekend at Road Atlanta. I wanted to know just what everyone else wanted to know. A first look at the new chicane in the Esses left me a little nauseous. It just didn’t look right. Riding on it was worse. Through the Turn Three chicane, if you’re on pace, you throttle up right at the apex of the right and flick it back left and hold it through the Esses. With the new Turn Four, as soon as you flick it back left out of Three, you have to guess where to brake over the blind hill and know where to flick back right into the bogus new section. Not only is it all blind and out of flow, it’s off camber to start with and tighter than the chicane at the top of the hill in Turn Three. Then while still not able to throttle up just yet you flick it back to the left over a tight crest. So when you do get to open her up towards Turn Five the suspension is unloaded all the way which is obviously cutting your traction supply. All this put together added up to three red flags before and even more crashes in the new turn just after lunch. When asked about the new Turn Four modifications, Sean P. “Mongo” Clarke of WERA responded, “The modifications made to the Turn Four area didn’t work out as well as we’d hoped once we put bikes on the track, we gave it a shot and would like to thank our riders for working with us. We do believe that with some modification it is viable for use in the future which will make that section of the track safer as well.” The new Turn 12 definitely came through much better than anyone expected it to. My first thought when I saw it was, the Turn 10b to Finish-line drag racing was over. The added braking zone proved that wrong. It’s now a drag race out of 10b over the hill fighting the front tire to stay on the ground the whole time until the downside while very shortly after you grab the brakes in a desperate attempt to fight gravity and physics to get the beast stopped and turned. Some complained about a little bump or dip on the inside at the apex but I personally believe that it just adds character to the track. I mean having the bike move around is part of road racing. That’s what makes it fun. And even if you don’t lead into and through the turn there is still a chance to get the drive and race to the line (which was proven more than once on the weekend.) “The Turn 12 modifications worked out fantastically and we’d really like to thank Road Atlanta and all involved for their time and investment in the track to make it even safer for motorcycle road racing,” said Clarke. I guess the overall verdict is…well…the new Turn 12 may not be as fun and ballsy as the old Turn 12, but they didn’t exactly screw up the entire track with it like they did with the Esses. It is actually a lot of fun. I think it’s kind of obvious what my final thoughts on the new Turn Four are. Honestly if they went straight across the track out of Turn Three instead of trying to re-track to the esses, making it a little more open and faster, they could slow it down making it safer without completely screwing up everything. But like Mongo said, it’s fixable.