Bruton Smith still remembers the pickup truck.

On July 7, the morning after a tornado hit Atlanta Motor Speedway, an extremely used truck was found several hundred feet from where it had been parked before the storm hit.

“It might have been worth $1,000,” said Smith, who as one of the nation’s largest automobile dealers has some expertise in that area. “It had no damage whatsoever.

“Meanwhile, there was this line of really nice vehicles there at the condos. The wind just rolled them all up into this big ball, all over the top of each other. But there sat this truck.”

Less than four months later, the track located about 20 miles south of downtown Atlanta will welcome the NASCAR Nextel Cup and Truck series teams for a weekend of racing.

To anyone who saw the storm damage, aside perhaps from Smith and track President Ed Clark and his staff, it must have seemed unlikely this weekend would go off as planned.

Three months after being hit by a tornado, Atlanta Motor Speedway will host both the Nextel Cup and NASCAR Truck series this weekend.

“Since that day we pledged to build Atlanta Motor Speedway back in time for this weekend,” Clark said. “Not only are we going to meet that goal, we were able to take this disaster and make it a more fan-friendly track.”

There was significant damage to almost every portion of the track, except the racing surface, from the storm – which weather experts said was an F2 tornado packing 150 mph winds – that swept through in the darkness that July evening.

The property took quite a beating: condos and track offices in a building off Turn 4, the roof of the level of suites along the frontstretch, scoring pylons in the infield, and light poles and fencing all around the track and adjacent facilities.

The most vivid images were from the backstretch. A grandstand, topped by a line of suites on what had been Atlanta’s frontstretch before remodeling previously switched things around, was hit especially hard.

Clark and Smith spoke by telephone the night of the storm and by sunrise the next morning a plane carrying key Speedway Motorsports Inc. personnel from Charlotte, N.C., was headed south to begin assessing the damage.

Workers spent two to three weeks after the storm mostly cleaning up the mess.

“The thing that amazed me,” Smith said, “was how wind could tear down so much chain-link fencing.”

More than eight miles of fencing has been replaced or repaired. Nearly 100 contractors and subcontractors have been involved, and there have been as many as 450 workers at the track on some days. Crews worked in two shifts, and in all nearly 350,000 man-hours have gone into getting the track ready for this day.

“We knew we had to keep everyone’s attitude upbeat to get this done,” Smith said. “We saw that these guys were stopping for lunch and all they had were sandwiches or something they’d brought to eat. So we set up a big tent and started serving hot lunches every day.”

Workers put up 129 flag poles, changed more than 600 plumbing fixtures and 750 tons of air conditioning systems, and used 20,250 cubic feet of concrete.

Sidewalks and additional shuttle stops have been installed around the perimeter and new ticket booths and wider entry gates are designed to improve pedestrian traffic flow.

As for the cars, a widened four-lane section of Georgia 20 leading from Interstate 75 to the track was opened and dedicated as the Bruton Smith Parkway.

“Over the next year and a half, you’ll see even more improvements as we continue rebuilding,” Clark said. “We have a long history of upgrades and improvements.”