A total of 1,300 flat-bed truckloads will be en route to Coronado just a few weeks before race cars take off across the starting line at NASCAR’s Father’s Day weekend race.
At the end of the month, everything needed to build an entire race track will be on these trucks and making their way through the gates of Naval Air Station North Island.
The course is set to be completed just one day before an estimated 130,000 people show up for the U.S. Navy’s 250th birthday weekend celebration with the racing company.
The street course is the longest in NASCAR history, running a total length of 3.4 miles, according to Jeremy Casperson, the senior director of design and development at NASCAR. The course has been dubbed the Qualcomm Circuit.
Casperson, a civil engineer, specializes in airport runways and highways.
“I like to tell people that racetracks are just runways that connect. That’s really all,” he joked while visiting the future NASCAR site. “But it has to be super flat and it has to be free of any defects.”
He said he and a team of five designed the track longer because they wanted to “get the best of everything on the Navy base.
The whole reason why we came out here is for the Navy … You get an aircraft carrier, then you go by the old city skyline, then you’ve got the bay.
Jeremy Casperson, senior director of design and development
“The whole reason why we came out here is for the Navy,” Casperson added, pointing out features on the base he wanted to include in the route. “You get an aircraft carrier, then you go by the old city skyline, then you’ve got the bay.
“So then we go through all the squadrons and we didn’t want to miss that, so it just ended up fitting in this circuit.”
Street race challenges
Because it’s a street race, Casperson designed the track around roads that already exist on base.
He explained that street races are unique because of the pre-existing road conditions. There are four different types of pavement on base that the cars will face: old and new concrete, and old and new asphalt.
All of this impacts the tire and how much it eats away at the rubber, affecting the race. He also explained that old concrete will have lost its top layer, making it more slippery.
But even with these challenges, Casperson said they have measures put in place to keep the drivers safe.
The engineer said there will be a 10,000-lb. block on the outskirts of the track at the base, with an 11.5-foot-tall fence on top of it to prevent cars from hitting any buildings or vessels in the event of an accident.
“(The fences) are linked together,” Casperson explained. “When they’re linked together, if you hit one of the blocks, it’ll pull 10,000 pounds … the weight of the wall keeps it from moving back.”
The construction of the course is supposed to take around four weeks, which is typically much longer than it takes to complete other street courses.
This is Casperson’s sixth season of designing tracks. He said that in Chicago, construction of a 2.3-mile course took only 18 days.
Base challenges
However, Casperson said, on a military installation the job will take a lot more time to get all the equipment and materials in due to security.
The build will take place in coordinated phases designed to minimize disruption on the base, said Matt Humphrey, NASCAR’s senior director of track communications.
The racetrack walls are going to come in five at a time on each truck, so the entrance to the base poses the biggest hurdle and hold-up because every single one has to be inspected.
Casperson said that in Chicago, he brought hundreds of trucks per day to build the track. “I would never try to send 200 truckloads through that gate (at North Island),” he added. “I’d blow their mind trying to handle that.”
Instead, he is going to try for 25 trucks daily coming onto base.
Security is a big part of this. Logistics in that, and the coordination between city, state and federal law enforcement was incredible.
“Security is a big part of this,” Casperson said. “Logistics in that, and the coordination between city, state and federal law enforcement was incredible.”
