Wind911

"Petrucci's team-mate Jack Miller said his Ducati's windscreen was broken by rocks and dust flying up from the track surface, ..."

Sounds like they have ground down the track some more since the Chin event earlier this month.

My car's non-wrapped parts (windshield, headlights, mesh grill, etc) had what looks like one year worth of track event wear over that single weekend.

multi21

I watched the MotoGP practice and qualifying today -- it's bad, the bikes are all over the place with major compression going around corners and braking zones. As they're coming down the back straight, there's dust coming up along the sides of the bikes kind of like the track was wet and spray is being displaced... keep in mind, they all ran yesterday and the dust is still on track! Lap times are about 1.5 second off this year even with faster bikes/better rubber.

Short of putting a new layer of asphalt on the surface, what else can be done before the F1 race?

nxfedlt1

why not just use the turbine blower they have to clean it off?

ShakeNBake

They ran the blower pretty much non stop for the chin event. The problem is that it just moves it off the track, only to come back on with wind. They need to vacuum the damn thing. How much can a big vacuum cost....

Veloce Raptor

What we really need is a big rain. But we are back in severe drought again, so......

TXE36

I don't recall all the dust problems when the place was new (first couple of years) - is that just because it was new and the dust has now settled in? Or did they do something else in the mean time?

I understand the bumps and I really hope the path of Harris Hill Road is not in COTA's future as to call that place bumpy is an understatement. In retrospect, MSRH is relatively smooth. It hasn't been paved in quite a while and I highly doubt it has been ground. I guess the soil around Houston is better than Austin - something I wouldn't have thought given Houston's clay gumbo.

The access road to COTA is *very* much like Harris Hill Road.

-Mike

MSR Racer

okie981

Big street sweepers, the kind that spray water, scrub, then suck up the muck. Would take a long time even with 3 of them running side-by-side and frequent stops to dump out all the muck sucked up.

ProCoach

It's all the residue from the grinding process...

Veloce Raptor

Correct.

Mike, there was no dust or gravel until they were forced to grind the track due to heaving.

This is I believe the fourth grinding they have done .

nxfedlt1

I thought you all were slightly exaggerating until I saw in car photos and videos....looks like west texas during our beautiful dust storms.

Raider89

During the recent Chin track weekend, this problem was much worse than "dust". This was the first group on track after the grinding. According to COTA, they ground 1" of concrete off some of the bump surfaces. That is a hell of a lot of grit, way more than jet blowers can handle. It was very damaging to everybody's cars. Some of the grit was 1mm particle pebbles, not just dust. Dust and tiny pebbles are in every crevice of my car from just 2 days on track.

craina

Front of my car took a beating with Chin that weekend. It was already rough, but noticeably worse now. Drove a garage mate's Atom, I think I still have grit in my teeth...

Texas RS

No exaggeration, it was so bad I chose not to drive on Saturday due to grit, it is a lot worse than dust. It did significant damage to a number of cars.

Texas RS

They ground the entire track this time, previously it was just in certain spots.