In 1969, David Sloyer, Earl Walker, and Arthur Montgomery purchased a 750-acre plot of farmland in Braselton with the intent to build a world-class road racing facility. When a Can-Am race was cancelled due to flood damage elsewhere, the series organisers chose Road Atlanta as a replacement, accelerating construction. The track was excavated, graded, and paved in just six months.
The first race was held on 13 September 1970. Vic Elford in a Chaparral 2J won pole, while Tony Dean in a Porsche 908/02 won the 300 km Can-Am event, with Stirling Moss serving as Grand Marshal.
Throughout the 1970s a succession of top-level series came to Road Atlanta: Can-Am, Formula 5000, IMSA Camel GT, and Trans-Am. The Sports Car Club of America held their annual national championship, the SCCA Runoffs, at Road Atlanta from 1970 to 1993. In 1986 the first road race in NASCAR Busch Grand National Series history took place at Road Atlanta.
The track was sold in 1978 and changed hands several times, eventually entering bankruptcy in 1993 under the Whittington Brothers. A group of business executives then purchased the track and spent three years making gradual improvements: constructing new buildings, renovating others, widening and resurfacing the track, and landscaping the grounds.
In November 1996 Don Panoz purchased the track and made Braselton the base of operations for his motorsports ventures. Panoz introduced the most significant changes to the circuit since its opening, removing the Dip and installing a chicane at the end of the long back straight. These modifications brought the track to FIA standards. A new pit and paddock area was constructed on the infield side, and a 10,000-seat terrace area was built around the new Turn 10 complex.
In 1998 the Petit Le Mans was inaugurated at Road Atlanta, becoming the opening race of the American Le Mans Series and drawing worldwide attention including entries from the Le Mans-winning Porsche factory team. The event attracted crowds of over 113,000 over four days at its peak, and became one of the flagship endurance races in North America.
Prior to the 2007 Petit Le Mans the entire track surface was repaved. The walls in the esses were moved away from the track to improve driver safety and spectator sight lines. In late 2007 and early 2008 the circuit was further modified with the reconfiguration of turns 4 and 12 for motorcycle safety benefit, with the racing line for cars remaining essentially unchanged.
The 1998 Petit Le Mans featured a dramatic blowover accident in which a Porsche 911 GT1 lifted its front end over a hump and backflipped into the barriers. A similar incident had occurred to Denny Hulme's McLaren M20 at the 1972 Can-Am race, and in the 2000 race one of the BMW V12 LMRs somersaulted at the same spot.
In September 2012 the track was purchased by IMSA Holdings as part of its acquisition of Panoz Motor Sports Group. The intention was to combine the Grand-Am and American Le Mans Series under unified management. In 2019 the track was renamed Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta following a naming rights agreement with Michelin.
The SCCA Runoffs is scheduled to return to Road Atlanta in 2027 and 2028, decades after the series last visited.
Road Atlanta's video game presence dates to the 1985 Commodore 64 game Racing Destruction Set. The circuit appears in Forza Motorsport, Gran Turismo 7 (added in update 1.26 in November 2022), Sports Car GT, and iRacing, where it has long been a favoured circuit for IMSA-style sports car racing online. The track's combination of fast flowing esses, heavy braking zones, and the famous downhill Turn 12 reproduce faithfully in sim, offering the same rhythm challenges that have defined the physical circuit since 1970.