CONCORD, N.C. (QUEEN CITY NEWS) — NASCAR usually comes to a screeching halt in the rain, but the Charlotte Motor Speedway brought in some horsepower ahead of Sunday’s Coca-Cola 600 to get the track dry, if there’s any rain.
Race teams and fans alike are depending on the machines if it rains and they need them to make a dry run, or several, to get the track back up to speed.
Racing and rain don’t mix.
“When you think about the best drivers in the world going 180, 190 miles an hour, they are constantly right on the edge even on the best conditions of what their car can handle and being able to keep that car on the racetrack,” said Jonathan Coleman of the Charlotte Motor Speedway.
His team needs some horsepower to get the speedway dry and get the drivers back on track when it rains. That’s where the Air Titans come in.
“Similar to a race car, they’ll kind of tuck up beside each other and work in tandem to blow as much of that water off the racetrack as they can,” said Coleman.
NASCAR brought 11 Air Titans for the weekend.
But they didn’t stop there. There are seven jet dryers. Charlotte Motor Speedway even borrowed some from their sister tracks.
“The jet dryer is a down-draft machine,” Coleman explained. “That basically is a jet engine pushing both air but also heat into the racetrack to help dry.”
These machines can get the track dry in less than two hours depending on the humidity.
“We’ll be able to get cars back on the racetrack and get fans back to their regularly scheduled fun,” said Coleman.
The speedway says the wet weather tires Goodyear created are designed for tracks that are a little bit shorter and the cars aren’t going as fast as they will be at the Charlotte Motor Speedway for this weekend’s races.
