Track Remembered
While NASCAR's elite series is in Richmond on Sept. 11 preparing for the race that will decide who competes for the Nextel Cup championship, a group of race fans will be in Augusta commemorating one of the city's great old tracks. The site of the old Augusta International Raceway road course is being developed into a public park complete with ballfields, a library and community center, but a group of racing enthusiasts is being allowed to place a monument to the track and its former stars on the property. The track hosted a race for the circuit now known as Nextel Cup on Nov. 17, 1963. At that time the track was a state-of-the-art, three-mile road course, but it only held the one Cup race in ཻ. That 417-mile event is significant in NASCAR history because it was the last ever won by Fireball Roberts.
