Drivers battle in the inaugural NASCAR race at the venue now known as Atlanta Motor Speedway. (Photo courtesy of Atlanta Motor Speedway)

Michael Greer of Monticello, Ga. (about 50 miles southeast of the track), has been to most of the races in AMS’ 50 years, including the first one. He was 8 years old and went to the race with a friend, David Birdsong.

“His dad was a professor at Georgia Tech [in Atlanta], and he was the type of fellow who was all for seeing anything that was new and exciting,” Greer said. “When the race came to town, he said, ‘Boys, we have to go.’ Naturally, being 8 years old, we were ready.

“We sat in the Weaver grandstand [on what was then the frontstretch] and had seats about five rows up from the track. We thought that was great. Then the race got going, and there was noise and grit and rubber coming up on us from the tires. But it was exciting for 8-year-olds. That day essentially made me a NASCAR fan.”

Greer would move on to watching Atlanta races from the infield, the new grandstands and the suites atop Turn 4. His friend David eventually would move on to Austin, Texas, where he now is a professor at the University of Texas.

Julian Wall, then 7 years old, watched the first race from the infield (and afterward had almost as much fun watching men try to push their passenger cars out of huge mudholes. It had rained during race week – an event that, unfortunately, would become quite ordinary for the speedway).

“There wasn’t hardly anything in the infield then,” said Wall, who then lived in Forest Park, Ga. but whose home now is in Meridian, Miss. “There was a little bathroom near what was then the third and fourth turns, and that was about it. I remember the pine trees growing up over turns one and two.”

Wall, now a computer consultant and a regular spectator at races at AMS and Talladega Superspeedway, said he has been at the Atlanta track for at least one race a year for the past 25 years. He remembers Richard Petty’s last race in 1992 and Bodine’s blistering pole lap in 1997 and the tragic 1990 race in which Ricky Rudd lost control of his car on pit road and killed Mike Rich, a Bill Elliott crewman.

The track now known as Atlanta Motor Speedway hosted its first NASCAR race in 1960. (Photo courtesy of Atlanta Motor Speedway)

“The first race in 1960 was my first one, but I’ve gone to quite a few since,” Wall said. “My father was a civil engineer and had some involvement in the work on the track, so he wanted to see the finished product. The whole racing thing was all pretty new to me at the time.”

Over the next few years, Wall said, he and his friends would wander along pit road after the AMS races. “Some of the drivers would let us pull the decals off their cars, and we’d stick them to our pant legs and take them home and put them on the walls in our rooms,” he said.

Greer, Wall and several other “first-timers” will recreate some of those memories Sunday night at AMS.

CUP: Atlanta Motor Speedway 1960

Mike Hembree is NASCAR Editor for SPEED.com and has been covering motorsports for 28 years. He has written several books on NASCAR, including "NASCAR: The Definitive History of America's Sport" and "Then Tony Said To Junior: The Best NASCAR Stories Ever Told". He is a six-time winner of the National Motorsports Press Association Writer of the Year Award.