On Sunday, November 1, 2015, the Mexico Formula One Grand Prix will return to the Formula One Championship at the newly renovated Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez track in Mexico City. ACO, the leader in surface drainage products since 1946, provided almost 4 miles of superior drainage solutions for the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez circuit renovation which began in 2014.
After the last race at the track in 1992, the circuit lost its Formula One status due to safety concerns. The settlement of the track created a very bumpy surface, deemed dangerous for the F1 cars of the nineties. Other changes required for car run offs and facilities meant that the circuit was not suitable for F1. The leading designer of Formula One motor racing circuits, German Hermann Tilke, was contracted to redevelop the circuit for today’s standards and work began in 2014 on upgrading the circuit complex. “The difficulty in Mexico City is its really tight boundaries, which provide a challenge. We needed to bring some parts of the track to the inside to have more runoff on the outside to comply with FIA safety regulations,” says Tilke.
The first race for the newly completed Autdodromo Hermanos Rodriguez circuit will take place on Sunday, November 1, to a sold out crowd of over 100,000. “We truly believe that this could become the largest Formula One race,” says Alejandro Soberon, CEO of CIE, the entertainment company that has brought the Mexican Grand Prix back to the F1 calendar this season.
Unlike some motor racing, Formula One will race in both sunshine and rain, which means that any surface water on the track must be evacuated from the track surface as quickly and efficiently as possible to maintain the safety of car and driver. In addition to removing surface water, the track drainage system also had to carry cables for the track communication system in the pit and paddock complex. The easily removable grates of ACO’s trench drainage solution was a perfect solution. Another challenge on a Formula One track is the incredible downforce from the car aerodynamics that requires anything on the surface of the race track to be extremely secure, including the drainage system. All of ACO’s drainage grates built into the circuit are of a monolithic design or have bolts to secure grates to the integral frame of the channel.
ACO’s drainage products are used on all types of commercial construction projects from airport runways to school playgrounds and has been used on many motor racing circuits across the World, including the Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas in 2013. Product supply to the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez circuit project were manufactured in Rendsburg Germany, Casa Grande, Arizona, USA and Mentor, Ohio, USA. Guillermo Cruz, President of ACO in Mexico City, commented, “Bringing products from three different ACO production facilities on 2 continents means it is very important we can hold and stage products for the redevelopment of the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez circuit. No other surface drainage supplier has these kinds of facilities and cannot provide the level of technical and on-site support that we can”.
