China Beach revamp among major track alterations at Mid-Ohio
Today at 10:35 AM
The section of Mid-Ohio's road course nicknamed ‘China Beach’, where Simon Pagenaud launched off the track in 2023 due to brake failure and barrel rolled through the recessed gravel trap, has been replaced.
Owned by Green Savoree Race Promotions, which puts on Mid-Ohio's annual calendar of events plus IndyCar's stops at St. Petersburg, Toronto, and Portland, the decision to remove the cliff-like drop at Turn 4 was made earlier in the year and is part of three significant offseason updates to the beloved circuit.
The vast crater has been filled and drawn level with the racing surface, thereby removing the drop-off that contributed to some of the severe crashes that have been seen at the end of the track's longest and fastest stretch of road. A mild alteration to the banked tarmac at Turn 4 has also been made, according to GSRP co-owner Kevin Savoree.
"Over the years, we've kept trying to evolve what that corner could look like," Savoree told RACER. "The track's been around 60-plus years and whenever you start to talk about modifications or changes, half the people say don’t change anything, so you end up with thousands of opinions about what that could look like. It's something that Kim Green and I have taken very seriously as being the stewards of the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course and so what we finally settled on, after discussions with the engineering firm Arcadia, and working with Tony Cotman and Dallara on some simulations, was flattening the banking from a little over four degrees to a little less than two degrees. So the track is flatter.
"Then, for lack of a better way to say it, we essentially filled in China Beach. That took approximately 16,000 cubic yards of fill, and we accomplished part of that by using some of the old concrete blocks (used as trackside barriers) we've had that started back in Columbus, Ohio at the IMSA race in the mid-’80s. Those are now buried in China Beach, because obviously, at their weight, the cost to haul those off is impractical, so those are part of the fill. The rest was filler from some neighboring farms and then the last part on top is 12 inches of number eight gravel. So, a gravel trap."
Drivers arriving at Turn 4 next year will also find new curbing and adjustments to the use of grass in the area.
"We shortened the band of grass on the outside edge of the track to where it’s a 10-foot band," Savoree said. "So if somebody goes off on drivers’ left, there’s a 10-foot grass band before they get into the gravel, and a rumble strip on drivers’ left that’s approximately 100 feet long and about three feet wide. It’s a concrete rumble strip that’s similar to the rumble strips on the outside of Turn 1 on drivers right and the outside of the Keyhole on drivers’ left."
Along with the big safety upgrades at Turn 4, GSRP has made a circuit-wide investment in modernizing barriers and fencing and repaving the higher-traffic roads around the facility.
"The other one related to removing a lot of the old-style concrete blocks and the old style fence is replacing them with steel I-beams, steel W-rail, and heavier gauge fence posts and the heavier gauge fencing," Savoree said. "And then essentially from Gate 3 at the spectator entrance up the hill, the east side of the boulevard, through the middle and upper paddocks, all the way around, including around the maintenance building and our shower facility, that’s all that been repaved.
"So those three projects are what we've been working on, and the only thing that’s left is to finish the fence install. So it's now down to just installation of about 5400-feet of of fence, which we’re doing with our Mid-Ohio team."
