Crews destroyed, hauled away, and repaved the 1.4-million square feet of racing surface at Daytona International Speedway in just 19 weeks. It took 100 million pounds of asphalt and a ton of engineering know-how. Here’s how they did it.
Built in 1958, Florida’s 2.5-mile Daytona International Speedway tri-oval’s one of the most famous locations in American racing. It’s home to the eponymous Daytona 500, normally one of the most exciting races on the NASCAR calendar. But this year the “Great American Race” was stopped twice due to a great American infrastructure problem: potholes.
This left the operators of the Daytona International Speedway with just a few months before the start of the 2011 racing season to tear the track down, transport it, and build it back up. Construction engineers quickly laid out the plan for recreating the famous racing surface.
Starting in July of this year, crews began to haul away the existing 50-year-old track surface. A lot of it. By the second week they’d removed 57 light poles, 5,000 feet of safety barrier, and 17 million pounds of asphalt and lime rock. (Ever the marketers, NASCAR will sell you part of the original track.)
And that was the easy part. Unlike repaving a street in your neighborhood, Daytona’s a banked surface designed to allow cars to reach speeds as high as 210 mph. This means crews have to carefully mill and grade each turn for the appropriate angle.
Once the appropriate angle is set, a large dump truck carrying asphalt transfers the crushed rock to a small buggy, which then transports the asphalt to the hydraulic crane. So far this process isn’t much different from how it’s normally done, but the next step involves a lot of engineering.
The asphalt is transferred from the crane to an ABG Titan 525 Paver, which lays it along the surface of the track. In order to achieve the angle the paver’s suspended from the track at a 31-degree angle by a Caterpillar D9 Bulldozer at the top of the track. This is followed by a Hamm DV-8 Double Steel Drum Roller, also suspended by a bulldozer. The Drum Roller uses its immense 40,000 pounds of weight to crush the material into a smooth surface. This is repeated numerous times until the surface is dense enough to support racing.
Last week, the finish line was paved and the barriers and catch fences started going back up along the track. Detail work continues as the crew prepares for a tire test on December 15th. It’ll be the first time cars will howl around the new surface.
Tag: NASCAR
Jeff Gordon Takes Advantage of a Government Bailout
Jeff Gordon made the decision to fire his entire NASCAR pit crew and take advantage of a Government bailout plan that would employ Chicago Ghetto Kids. This was brought about by a documentary on how the Chicago Ghetto Kids were able to remove 4 tires in less than 6 seconds without Hi-Tech Equiptment – whereas Gordon’s existing crew could only perform this task in 8 seconds with millions of dollars woth of equipment
This was thought to be an excellent and very bold move by Jeff Gordon as most races are won or lost in the pit stop. However. Gordon got more than he bargained for.
At the crew’s 1st practice session, not only was the inexperienced crew able to change all 4 wheels in under 6 seconds, but within 12 seconds they had re-painted the car installed 4 rolls of duct tape in problem areas & sold the car to Dale Earnhard Jr. for 10 cases of Bud, a bag of weed and several nude photo’s of Jeff Gordon’s wife in the shower
Montoya: NASCAR Not As Boring AS F1 and Much Harder
Although F1 isn’t totally boring, it has been progressively going down hill for a while now. It’s getting to the point now where almost any attempt at over taking can be considered dangerous driving and that is part of why Juan Pablo Montoya left for NASCAR.
I would like to see much less of a gap between the top and the bottom teams, but as it stands technology and money are the driving force between the top and bottom, not driving skill. I still enjoy F1 despite this, but I can totally agree it’s been getting boring recently.
Montoya: NASCAR harder than ‘boring’ F1
Juan-Pablo Montoya has delivered a stinging rebuke to the sport that delivered him seven grand prix victories, 13 pole positions, twelve fastest laps and no fewer than 30 podium finishes, blasting Formula 1 as boring’ and claiming that as far as the Americans are concerned, Lewis Hamilton is Lewis Who?’
The famously outspoken Colombian competed in 94 starts in the top flight for BMW-Williams and McLaren-Mercedes from 2001 to 2006, before dramatically walking away mid-season just under two years ago to return to his roots across the Pond, where in 1999 he had sensationally clinched the Champ Car (then CART) laurels for Chip Ganassi Racing in his maiden campaign in the open-wheel series.
Montoya now races in the NASCAR Nextel Cup, and as such has become the only driver in history aside from the legendary Mario Andretti to have won races in F1, CART, the IndyCar Series, Grand-Am and NASCAR, with his sole triumph to-date in the latter coming in the Toyota/Save Mart 350 at Infineon Raceway in Sonoma, California last year.
Indeed, the 32-year-old’s 2007 performances were impressive enough to earn him the coveted Rookie of the Year’ accolade, and reunited with Ganassi since his return Stateside he clearly does not regret making the move.
Formula 1 drivers are convinced that they’re so much better than anyone else, Montoya told The Times. When I was in F1, every week I was on the podium. It was cool, but is it satisfying? It wasn’t, because it was the most boring races.
The guy who started in front of you would drive away from you, and the guy who was behind you would drop away from you, unless you [had] f***ed up in qualifying and then you needed to have a different pit-stop strategy to beat them.
It’s boring. It’s a shame, because the technology these cars have and the amount of companies that are involved is unreal. I don’t know how big companies do it for such a long time without results.
Whilst he acknowledges results can sometimes be just as hard to come by in his current position, the big, brash appeal of the US’ premier stock car series is evidently very much to Montoya’s liking, with overtaking less of an art form and more of a past-time as up to 40 cars go wheel-to-wheel for three hours solid. What’s more, 17 of the nation’s top 20 best-attended sporting events are NASCAR races, and the sport is the second-most watched on American television.
It’s harder here, argued the Bogota native, currently sitting 19th in the championship chase out of some 67 fierce competitors. When you run 15th, sometimes you think it sucks, but look at the big picture 15th here is like sixth or seventh in F1, because there are twice as many cars.
The incredible thing is here I run 15th or 20th on average, and there are four or five weeks in the year where I have a chance of winning. In F1 if you run sixth or seventh, you run sixth or seventh the whole year.
It doesn’t matter if you’re running for the lead, or for 30th, you’re always racing somebody [in NASCAR]. That’s much better.
Montoya also pointed out that such is NASCAR’s incredible popularity in the States, F1 barely raises a flicker on the interest scale, and whilst he rates his McLaren successor Lewis Hamilton as a good kid’ and a nice guy’, he is blunt in pointing out that: Go ask anybody here who is Lewis Hamilton. Lewis who?
Chip Ganassi team-mate and former Indianapolis 500 winner Dario Franchitti who joined NASCAR from the IndyCar Series this season, but was almost immediately out of action with a broken ankle sustained in a 180mph collision at Talladega back at the end of April echoed Montoya’s sentiments.
It’s been a tough baptism, reflected the Scot. I thought it would be difficult, but I didn’t realise how difficult. The good thing is I feel I know a lot more now about what to do.
For anybody that loves cars, it’s entertainment that’s second-to-none. If you want exciting racing, to watch people driving cars that are very difficult to drive, this is the answer.
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