I have a question for all the engineers out there.

Like the title says, does autocross have a negative effect on the paved surface it's held on?

 

Only when I show up.

 

^ His car must leak! LOL! j/K.

 

I've heard if you go fast enough the pavement may catch fire.

 

Concrete is a brittle solid (meaning it fractures, mostly due to heating/cooling in its case, rocks are extremely weak under tensile forces), and you are mostly applying a shear force going fast across it. Doubt it.
Now if you hit something sticking out of the pavement, the light pole might break a little concrete off, but usually wins in that battle.

 

If you are talking blacktop, I have seen cars throw up a lot of joint/crack sealer during events. I would assume if its hot enough black top would suffer a little.

 

The local autocrossers were kicked off a site because the asphalt started breaking up badly. It was an old surface and likely very thin.

 

Does a bear shit in the woods?

 

I've seen both old and new pavement get ripped up. A local site has requested we stay off the new pavement after it was damaged during an autocross. We lost a concrete airport site because we were pulling up the fill strips between the concrete sections.

 

Oil + lateral forces = damaged asphault

The autocross itself doesn't damage the lot that much. Over time, as oil leaks from the cars regularly parked on the lot, it will soften the ashpault, then begin to crumble with applied lateral / shear forces. Those crumbles eventually turn in to cracks, and the lateral forces begin splitting into other vectors, and soon you're taking huge chunks of surface out.

Over time, anything will wear out, but the oil accelerates the process by reducing the mechanical properties of the surface.