JOLIET – When Chicagoland Speedway opened in 2001, it was a state-of-the-art facility, from the quality of the construction to the views from every seat – and the concourse – to the paving of the track.

Everything about it was top-notch.

The track’s surface, it quickly became evident, was too good. Too perfect. Too new. It permitted only one fast lane to go around the 1.52-mile oval in the banked turns. The narrow groove meant extreme difficulty for stock cars to pass, and it showed. (Indy cars, lighter, smaller and more nimble, went side by side for lap after lap with terrifying regularity two months later.)

After the inaugural Chicagoland race in what was then called the Busch Series, tow trucks dragged clumps of old tires around the track for endless laps into the night, trying to create a second groove for the Tropicana 400, the first Cup race, on Sunday afternoon.

The Busch race, the Hills Bros. Coffee 300, was won by newcomer Jimmie Johnson on a pass – but it was by taking only two tires compared with leader Ryan Newman’s four – on the final pit stop. On the track, not much passing percolated.

Out came the tow trucks.

Sunday’s race was better, but not much. As it turned out, the race was won by rookie Kevin Harvick on a bold pass of Mark Martin on the 242nd of 267 laps, the last of 14 lead changes. Most transfers of first place came via pit stops. Harvick predicted “next time we come back here it’ll probably be two or three grooves wide,” while Robert Pressley, who finished a career-best third, said, “Whenever turns 1 and 3 widen out, it’s going to be a great racetrack to race on.”

In 2002, Harvick defended his title successfully on the still-green track by dropping onto the apron of Turn 1 on a late restart and zooming past Jeff Gordon.

“It was a pretty stupid move, in my opinion,” groused Gordon.

But it worked when little else did, and Harvick got the trophy.

By 2005, Harvick’s prediction and Pressley’s belief had come to pass, so to speak. The track had grayed out to the point passing was possible anywhere. Today, 16 years after the first race, Chicagoland Speedway has turned into a driver favorite.

“This track’s always a lot of fun; it’s certainly aged a little bit more,” said Johnson, now a seven-time Cup series champion, and a two-time pole-sitter here but never a Cup race winner at Chicagoland. “A little bit more character in the track, which I appreciate and love, and I know the rest of the field will.”

Character is Johnson-speak for multiple lanes, of course. But there’s more to it than that. The older surface also wears on tires running at 180 mph per lap.

“It’s slick and tires wear out,” Austin Dillon said. “You see the tires fall off real quick here. From lap 1 to lap 10, there’s a lot of falloff. So that’s a good thing. It got a little bit rougher from last year to now, and that’s a good thing also, so we can adjust these cars to make them handle a little differently.”

The adjustments now include what lane to pick.

“It’s one of those places where you can run from the bottom all the way to the wall and it’s constantly moving every single lap,” Ryan Blaney said. “That’s like the best mile-and-a-halves that we have, and it’s definitely up there. It’s a great place to kick off the playoffs.

“I kind of wish we came here twice a year.”

To a man, the drivers don’t want anything changed. They’re now as comfortable with a competitive Chicagoland surface as they are with curling up on an old couch.

“I really love the old asphalt and it wearing out the tires,” Ricky Stanhouse Jr. said. “It’s working its way up as one of the drivers’ favorites because the other ones keep getting repaved.”

So now track president Scott Paddock knows, if he didn’t know before. Feel free to replace the carpeting in the suites and repaint everything that doesn’t move, but don’t touch the race track.