NASCAR to introduce new track drying system in 2013 – NASCAR news
In the upcoming season, a new track drying season is being introduced by NASCAR. The new system aims at speeding up the drying process, thus saving a lot of time.
In the 2012 Sprint Cup Series, Daytona 500, the inaugural race of the season had to be delayed by one and a half day because of continuous rain. It was the first time in the 54-year history of the race that it was competed on a day other than Sunday. The
2012 Daytona 500 started on Monday and was completed on Tuesday.
In order to avoid future delays due to bad weather, NASCAR has developed the new track drying system.
The new machine is in its final stages of completion in NASCAR’s Research and Development centre. As reported by MRN.com, NASCAR chairman and CEO Brian France has set a goal to speed up the track drying process and hopes that the new system is going to save
around 80 percent of time currently being spent in the track-drying process.
“Our group in the R&D centre went right to work on that. We engaged third-party help and we'll have it for Daytona. We won't be at 80 percent, but we're going to be dramatically better with a whole new system on how to dry the track as much as 60 percent
(faster) and we will get to the 80 percent goal,” France said Tuesday night on MRN’s ‘NASCAR Live.’
Using the current mechanism, it takes around two hours to dry a 2.5-mile track. It is been speculated that with the new track-drying system, this time will be reduced to only 30 minutes which is exactly 75 percent less than the current time. Similarly, for
short tracks like the one at Martinsville Speedway, NASCAR aspires to bring down the track-drying time to only 15 minutes.
According to the NASCAR CEO, the use of jet dryers powered by jet fuel is being discontinued in the new track-drying system. Instead, the new machine will be air powered and will work in combination with a vacuum system. This makes the new machine much more
environmental friendly than its predecessor.
In the 2012 Daytona 500, Juan Pablo Montoya got involved in an incident. His car crashed into a jet dryer, causing the dryer to burst into flames because the jet fuel present in the machine caught fire. Although last year’s incident was one of a kind in
NASCAR’s history, still the new machine has completely rules out the chances of such incidents in the future.
Giving a general idea of how the new track-drying machine was going to work, France said, “We're patenting some technology that (uses) air pressure. Consider it as giant scuba tanks, which drive air out and blow water off the surface in a dramatically better
way. It's a big solution which is ready now.”
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