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Be Ready For Race Day Track Conditions By Reading The Weather

By Jennifer Szabo July 05, 2019
It’s a sunny morning after a light evening rain and you’re ready to race. The engine is tuned, the car is ready. You make your first pass and….the track seems slicker than expected. As the morning chill gives way to a hot afternoon sun, the track still isn’t hooking up. What should have been a quick and easy pass is surprisingly slow. What happened? We’re diving into some of the track and weather conditions that might affect your run on a given weekend at the track.

For an unprepared track surface, the traction is between the tire patch and the surface. Any dirt, oil, or humidity limits traction. Surface treatments are a common alternative to a “no-prep” track. The treated surface is a coating applied to the track. A loss of traction can be between the tire and the coating or the coating and the track.

A car races down the track on a well-prepared track surface.


Loss of traction at the tire is in the hands of the tuner. Loss of traction between the coating and the track may be in the hands of the track crew. For example, delaminations can occur from excessive high track surface temperature or from excessive track surface humidity.

The Sun Affects The Track

On a cool, sunny day of around 60-degrees Fahrenheit, track temperature can be 10 degrees hotter. At our local track near the coastline, the lower limit of the surface temperature for reasonable traction is in the low 60’s. It is hard to hook up below that temperature.

On a hot, sunny day of around 100-degrees Fahrenheit, track temperatures can reach 120-degrees Fahrenheit or more. Mike Walker, NHRA Operations Manager for Lucas Oil Raceway, reports that surface treatments commonly used for drag racing events get gooey at surface temperatures above that.

Stringers appear behind the tires as they roll over the surface pulling off the gooey surface treatment with poor traction. Walker said the crew will scrape excess surface treatment away as the temperature increases and do a spot treatment to bare concrete in the hot weather. They use PJ1 resin to help bond the PJ1 brands surface treatment to their concrete.

Humidity Affects The Track

When the dew point gets close to the outside temperature, humidity in the air condenses out onto surfaces. Dew point is the temperature at which moisture saturates the atmosphere and liquid occurs in the form of dew, fog, or rain. Any liquid that occurs will coat the track and make traction more difficult.

In coastal regions, 90 degree days at 40-percent humidity are commonly followed by 60 degree nights at 80-percent humidity. The amount of moisture in the air may be the same. However, the cooler temperature means there is less available space for that moisture and, therefore, a higher relative humidity. Generally, when the temperature gets to within a degree of the dew point, racing is over.

Hourly air density weather for Lucas Oil Raceway, Indianapolis, IN, for May 2, 2019. The early morning temperature was around 60-degrees Fahrenheit while the dew point was close. At that point, humidity condenses out and coats a racetrack surface even if it is not currently raining.


Suppose the temperature is dropping from sundown. You’re in staging lanes and your windscreen has fog on it. You wipe it off, and you can see. The windscreen is cooler than the racetrack surface in the early evening. The ground will be warmer in the evening from heat soaking in during the day. Racecars are still flying down the track and hooking up because the track surface is still warmer than the dew point.

According to IHRA‘s track prep staff, continued traffic on busy event days helps maintain traction even in damp conditions. The air washing from each race vehicle blows away debris and moisture that helps keep dew from forming. Often the racing groove can narrow under these conditions. With dew on the track on a cool evening, IHRA staff reports that the groove could be as little as 10-feet wide.





Hidden Sources Of Water On The Track

We walked across a track surface right after a week of heavy rain. The weather was sunny and warm but groundwater had collected under the track surface. Drainage is a significant characteristic for any track with rainy weather. It is a good reason to walk the racetrack during downtime: to see idiosyncrasies such as this or confirm their absence.

This racetrack had poor drainage under the track. After a lengthy rainstorm, water seepage came out of pavement cracks causing racing slick hydroplaning and loss of handling.


Track Cleanliness

A common practice in national event competition is to wash the pavement with regular detergent before surface treatment to remove residual oil, exhaust waste, and dust. If a track was recently rained on for several days with good drainage, it would already be clean without washing on a subsequent warm sunny day.

A clean connection can then be established between the surface treatment and the pavement. Even if the surface treatment is sticky to the racing slick, a poor bond to the pavement from a dirty interface limits the tire plant. Examination of delamination or rubber balling up may be an indication of a track limitation and not your race vehicle.

Track Dust

Dust is more of a problem at tracks with exposed land or fields nearby. Unpaved pits, driveways, or farmland surrounding the track kick up dust and windy conditions bring more dust to the track. If it is present prior to surface treatment, it can limit the bond to the pavement reducing the available traction. After surface treatment, it can limit traction between the tire and the surface treatment.