This Is Wild… Track Officials Drain Water From Under Kansas Speedway

Chalk this one up to the “WTF files”!!! NASCAR officials halted practice during last weekend’s KC Masterpiece 400 at Kansas Motor Speedway due to moisture seeping up through the asphalt racing surface.

This isn’t really something new, it happens often when there has been a lot of rain in the days or weeks prior to an event at facilities all across the country. Rain gets trapped beneath the surface during the downpour, then the sun heats it up and it pushes its way back through. Obviously anytime there is water on a racing surface, it’s bad news for the cars trying to race, whether they be drag racing or round track, so measures must be taken to solve the problem.

There is a legendary story about the owners of a drag strip literally ripping the surface of their track up during a major event, installing a drainage system underneath, then resurfacing the track all in time to complete the event, without fear of water bubbling back up and ruining the racing.

NASCAR officials didn’t quite take those extreme measures at Kansas, but they did break out the drill and a massive concrete saw and received the pressure built up under the track, proving that this may have been a much larger problem had it not been caught sooner. That much water applying that much pressure to the back side of the track had apparently caused the asphalt to “bubble”, causing a bump in the track that the drivers could see and feel and that had even caused damage to some of the cars.

Luckily the officials found the issue and racing was able to resume later once the issue was resolved, before things got even worse and the track was damaged beyond repair. It seems likely that NASCAR is having the track inspected to make sure the issue doesn’t return, or cause damage before the next time the races come back to Kansas.