Track sweeper speeds up races
Taupo’s Bruce McLaren Motorsport Park has just invested in a ‘state of the art’ cleaning tool which means getting the track race ready is that much easier.
Two weeks ago, the FODBOSS was brought into Bruce McLaren Motorsport Park, ready to be used.
Conventional ways of cleaning Bruce McLaren Motorsport Park were proving to be too slow so management brought in the ‘‘boss’’.
The FODBOSS machine means grounds keeper, Ian Rimmer, is not longer out on the track in a tractor for hours on end sweeping debris off the track.
Rimmer said, depending on how big the event was, it would take him close to three hours to get it clean.
‘‘And that didn’t include recleaning it if the wind picked it all up and blew it on the track again,’’ he said.
The old cleaning method simply swept the debris from one part of the track to another but the new cleaning machine removes it altogether, cutting the cleaning time down to an hour max.
‘‘We just attached the cleaner to the back of the truck and tow it behind us at 25-30kmh,’’ BMMP operations manager, Russell Barriball said.
‘‘It has blades on it which sweep the track and lifts the debris and pushes it into little buckets behind the blades. It’s so simple.’’
After the North Island Endurance event, the FODBOSS was put to good use.
After blowing out the pit sheds, it only took four sweeps of the pit area to make it spick and span.
‘‘It took an hour to blow out the shed and only 10 minutes to sweep up the rubbish,’’ Barriball said.
‘‘The rubber is 50 per cent of the debris that would normally have been swept off to the side of the track, the balance of debris would be pumice and stones,’’ he said.
Barriball said the new system makes it that much easier to get the track ready for the next lot of racing.
‘‘Every time someone books out the track, we hand it over race ready,’’ he said.
‘‘Sometimes we could have a Friday afternoon event and then another on Saturday.
‘‘We’ve only got so much time between each event to get the track clean. This mat is critical for the way we operate.’’