Whoever said, "location is everything," certainly wasn't a race fan.

The sun-drenched area surrounding Homestead-Miami Speedway offers endless views of crystal clear waters, world class restaurants and is less than an hour south of Miami.

What else could a race fan ask for? Oh yeah, how about a decent race.

In the four years since it began playing host to Winston Cup racing, the Homestead-Miami Speedway has been unable to produce that one critical element. Sure, there have been double-digit lead changes in each event; it just hasn't felt like it.

Perhaps you can point to the fact that the last two races have been won from the pole or how Tony Stewart led 166 of 267 laps in 2000. But the fact of the matter is there are few statistics that can illustrate truly how dull the racing has been in Homestead.

That is about to change.

For the second time in its eight-year existence the 1.5-mile south Florida track has received a facelift. The turns, previously banked a virtually undetectable six degrees, have been reconfigured to a maximum 20 degrees of slope.

"It looks like Dover on steroids," said Dale Earnhardt Jr. after seeing the track for the first time during a visit this summer.

The $10 million project involved the use of a variable-degree banking system. Essentially the degree of banking increases progressively from 18 degrees at the bottom to 20 degrees at the top of each turn.

"I'm very excited and very impressed," Ricky Craven said. "It is an absolute improvement."

Past criticism of the track centered on the lack of side by side racing it produced. Engineers believe banking will rectify that problem but racers know that new asphalt typically delays that result. Normally a new track needs to be broken in before multiple grooves develop. So far it appears Homestead may be an exception to that rule.

"I think the potential is there for a lot of good racing, especially for a track that has fresh pavement," explained Ryan Newman after an open test session Wednesday afternoon. Ricky Rudd agreed.

"I know for sure you can go in there two-wide because I've missed the corner several times," added Rudd. "I've been in grooves that I didn't know existed and the car still stuck and could still run pretty good."

The appearance of multiple racing lines has eased concern about the racing. Still there are some worries that the new asphalt might create tire issues.

"Asphalt is really dark and being new, it's going to carry a lot of heat," explained Craven. "We're seeing some temp in the tires and that's probably the only concern I have."

Another byproduct of new asphalt is speed. The track is approximately 25 mph faster than it was a year ago. The best practice speeds Friday morning were in the 180 mph range, shattering the existing track qualifying record of 156.440 mph.

With speed comes heightened safety concerns. Homestead-Miami Speedway addressed this by installing SAFER barriers, becoming the fourth NASCAR track (Indianapolis, Richmond and New Hampshire) to adopt the soft wall technology.

Of course no driver wants to test the SAFER barrier and a way of lessening that likelihood is by learning the proper line. Wednesday's open test served as a good education in ways to get around the new layout. Drivers quickly learned that while the track looks symmetrical, the turns are very different.

"You can't really carry as much speed into one. It's hard to get the car to turn over there," Jeff Burton said. "Three and four is kind of a standard big racetrack kind of corner -- a lot of speed, get in the throttle really quick and carry a lot of speed off the corner."

Coming into the weekend some believed this configuration could be attacked flat-footed but that's not the case. Carrying too much speed into the corner can create problems.

"I can get off into one and I can get the front end pushing on it and I've got to feather off the throttle," Rusty Wallace said. "You're definitely off the throttle quite a bit here, a lot more than I expected."

Perhaps exaggerating the level of difficulty is the nondescript appearance of the new layout. The track has no painted stripes, giving drivers few reference points.

"There's nothing on the wall and nothing on the racetrack so that makes it a little more difficult to be precise each and every lap," explained Dale Jarrett.

"They need to put a bright white stripe around the bottom," Rudd said. "Even if they just came around and put a couple of dots on the race track, at least until you get to the center of the corner, I think it would help you see a better race on Sunday."

Nonetheless, few are worried about seeing a good race on Sunday. At least not to the extent they were a year ago. Multiple grooves and increased speeds have generated excitement heading into Sunday's 2003 Winston Cup finale'. Finally, for racing fans, the Homestead-Miami Speedway is truly a tropical paradise.

Mike Massaro covers NASCAR for ESPN and ESPN.com.