The jet dryers, mounted on pickup trucks and using a Westinghouse J34 jet engine, have been in use since the 1970s for road construction. The Daytona International Speedway has every piece of drying machinery they've got across the country here today." " needs to stop before we can begin the process of drying," said NASCAR president Kim Helton. The rain won, mainly because it wouldn't stop, and then stay away. In the absence of actual racing, fans lined the fences when the jet dryers were out and watched them amble along, albeit loudly. The jet dryers came out twice, and rain chased them back in both times. The jet dryers, brought to NASCAR in 1976 by legendary team owner Roger Penske, use a 1950s-circa jet engine to blast air at temperatures of about 1,100 degrees onto the racing surface to dry it out in as little as 90 minutes - provided it stops raining. And if tires with tread on street-legal cars hydroplane on slick public roads, imagine what a race car would do.Īs a result, it's not enough to merely let the sun dry a track out. A driver attempting to drive a race car on a wet track at any speed would simply slide sideways once it hit a banked turn. The combination of slick race tires, a steeply-banked track tilted at 31 degrees in the corners and moisture simply do not mix. Unlike football, baseball or even golf, racing cannot take place if there's even a drizzle. "Every time we got close, another pocket of rain hit," said Joie Chitwood III, president of Daytona International Speedway. In the end, the large, loud vehicles that blow and boil the water off wet racetracks lost the battle, as the race was postponed until noon today. DAYTONA BEACH - The only vehicles allowed on the Daytona International Speedway track Sunday puttered along at about 20 mph and blew hot air instead of noxious exhaust.īut not a single race car could move in the Daytona 500 until the 10 jet dryers - a hybrid of truck, airplane and hot-air blower - did their job.
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