Success at the Race of Champions: Wirtgen Group machines build the perfect race track in record time

Road construction machinery from the German Wirtgen Group has played a key role in the success of the recent spectacular Race of Champions motor sport event at the UK’s new Wembley Stadium. A team of Vögele pavers, Hamm rollers and a Wirtgen cold milling ma-chine were used by multi-disciplined construction UK contractor F M Conway to lay the asphalt race track, while a pair of Conway’s Wirtgen cold milling machines followed on milling off the material afterwards.

F M Conway, a customer of sales and service company Wirtgen Limited headquartered in Lincoln, won the prestigious contract to transform the new Wembley pitch and cover it in asphalt for a motor racing track for the Race of Champions, which saw some of the world’s top track and rally drivers go head to head on Sunday 16 December to decide the champion of champions.

Ekström beats Schumacher to the Race of Champions title

Event organiser International Media Productions invited drivers from Formula 1, rally, American NASCAR, Le Mans 24 hours and touring cars. These included the current 2006 champion of champions Mattias Ekström,seven times Formula 1 world champion Michael Schumacher and current Formula 1 drivers David Coulthard, Jenson Button, Heikki Kovalainen and Sebastian Vettel, triple world touring car champion Andy Priaulx, double NASCAR champion Jimmie Johnson, seven times Le Mans winner Tom Kristensen, double world rally champion Marcus Gronholm and four times American Champ Car champion Sebastian Bourdais.

Mattias Ekström from Sweden beat Michael Schumacher in the best of an exciting three heat final. Both drivers claimed a win in each of the first two heats. However, in the last heat Ekström built up a small lead over Schumacher who pulled out all the stops to respond. But the German spun his car in a dash for the chequered flag, leaving Ekström to take the crown for the second year running.

A prestigious job for the race track experts from Conway

F M Conway, working for the Race of Champions’ owners and co-founders Fredrik Johnsson and Michèle Mouton, built the approximate 1 km long twin parallel lane asphalt racing track for the drivers to race side by side in identical cars. A 40 strong Conway team, with their Wirtgen Group fleet of road construction machinery, worked round the clock for six days prior to handing the track over to IMP on Friday 30 November for final preparations for the Race of Champions on 16 December.

F M Conway initially placed 8,500 aluminium protection plates over the Wembley turf along the line of the twin track, together with 400 m of standard motorway barrier around the perimeter of part of the twisty cir-cuit. The team then followed on placing about 2,400 t of recycled road planings on the plates as a sub-base for each of the two lanes and cen-tral dividing crash barrier, prior to compaction with its pair of Hamm HD 90 and single Hamm DV 90 VV rollers. Also a Hamm tandem vibratory roller of the new Compact Line, a HD 14 VV, was used to compact the material.

The compacted sub-base was then overlaid with 1,140t of asphalt binder base course and the final running surface using a pair of Conway’s own Vögele 1803-1 wheeled pavers prior to final compaction, again with the three Hamm rollers. “We used the Hamm rollers as our client IMP wanted a smooth running surface that drove well, but didn’t have too much grip,” says F M Conway surfacing director Nick Burman. “We used our Vögele pavers and Hamm rollers that are already part of our fleet and were bought because they are high quality machines, which we normally use in the London area on fairly congested and tight roads where we need versatile and manoeuvrable plant that is also capable of high volume production.

IMP’s project manager also mentioned how impressed he was and how fantastic he thought the machines had performed at Wembley and how versatile and manoeuvrable the wheeled pavers were compared to the track pavers that he had seen on previous Race of Champions tracks in France.”

At the same time as laying the asphalt Conway used a 50 t capacity crane to place a precast concrete bridge and approach ramp units for the track crossover, together with a further 650 t of recycled planings infill. A narrow and shallow channel was cut out for the twin track’s cen-tral median by a Wirtgen W 50 cold milling machine to accommodate the crash barriers and banking formed for the bends. Resin rumble pads were added on the bends and sand placed on exposed aluminium plates and edges prior to final line marking, jet cleaning and hand over to IMP.

“We have built race tracks before, but this is the first one we have had to construct in six days and then to remove it in three,” says F M Conway Contracts Director Civil Engineering Division Brian Morris. “The Race of Champions is a remarkable event and we had a remarkable site team to build it.”

Large milling machines give their very best

After the Race of Champions F M Conway returned to Wembley very early in the morning of Monday 17 December. This time with a smaller 16 strong team for a further three days of round the clock working to remove the 4,400 t of asphalt used to build the track, prior to handing the pitch back to the Wembley Stadium grounds men.

The key equipment during the track removal was a pair of F M Conway’s cold milling machines, a W 2000 and W 2100, both loading into a 30 strong fleet of the company’s 20 t capacity trucks. Both milling machines were operating simultaneously, taking out in one pass the two layers of binder and wearing course together with the planings base course. The depth of material varied between 11 cm up to a maximum of 30 cm and each machine was able to plane out and load a 20 t truck in about 3 minutes. As a matter of F M Conway policy the 4,400 t of asphalt plan-ings will be recycled and reused in the company’s future contracts.

“Our Wirtgen W 2000 and W 2100 are high production planers and proved ideal for the Wembley contract, which is a bit unusual and not the typical job for us,” adds Nick Burman. “We have a mix of Wirtgen planers to cater for the varied jobs in London where we often get big projects where we need to plane out and put material back down in the same shift to get the road open for traffic the following morning.”

“There’s nothing to beat Wirtgen planers and my W 2000 is a great ma-chine and very reliable and ideal for the type of work we do,” says W 2000 operator Dave Monk. “It has a very good steering lock and is ex-tremely manoeuvrable and can get into some very tight places, although this Wembley job is pretty straightforward for it.” F M Conway’s W 2100 operator Ian Broughton echoes his views. “Wembley is a very high pro-file job for the company and we’ve enjoyed doing it. The W 2100 is a great machine and has been very reliable. I’ve been operating it for 18 months and it’s very versatile and manoeuvrable with formidable produc-tion. It’s well built and the 700 hp Caterpillar engine provides plenty of power so it doesn’t ever struggle.”

Key to success: Planning and Wirtgen Group equipment

“The whole Wembley job has gone extremely well,” says F M Conway project manager Clive Carter. “The key to the success was the preplan-ning and the equipment we are using. The planing out with our Wirtgens has gone very well and we’re taking off all the material, the two layers of binder and wearing course plus the base course planings, all in one pass right down to just above the aluminium plates covering the grass. Our sweepers then come in and clean off the small remainder from the plates, prior to lifting them out and handing the pitch back to the grounds men.”