AFTER more than 13 years of hard racing and heavy wear and tear, the iconic Mount Panorama racing track received the mother of all makeovers in November last year.
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It was a $2 million resurfacing exercise that was more than a decade in the making.
As circuit manager, Bathurst Regional Council had to undertake the major upgrade to meet international licensing standards.
So, when large chunks of the track were seen being torn up this week, Mount users raised concerns about the quality of the high-price work.
But council’s director of engineering Doug Patterson was quick to clarify the situation yesterday.
“There was nothing wrong with the asphalt, there are just minor irregularities that needed to be rectified,” Mr Patterson said.
“This sort of work was always part of the original contract.”
There is no doubt the resurfacing is a specialist job – nearly 6000 tonnes of asphalt needing to be laid so evenly that not one bump or hollow joint would be tolerable.
The work, supported by the federal government under its Regional Development Australia Fund, involved taking out the existing asphalt profile down to a depth of 35 millimetres and replacing it with a 35mm layer of new asphalt.
At the time of the upgrade, a council spokesman explained the elaborate nature of the task.
“You need a special blend of hot mix, not just the ordinary, run-of-the-mill stuff you’d put down on any other road,” he said.
“There’s products used which are manufactured to much higher specifications because of the greater stresses and downforce the V8 Supercars put down on the pavement, especially on the bends.
“You could certainly say you wouldn’t get a more high profile asphalt job than this one.”
Mr Patterson said it was always likely, given the nature and scale of the exercise, that there would be minor variations to the surface that council would require the contractors to adjust. And these adjustments had no bearing on the overall quality of the makeover.
“Council are actually very happy with the end result of the resurfacing,” he said.
“The resurfacing is a marked improvement and the results were on show during this year’s Bathurst 12 Hour, where cars were clocking times far superior to previous years.”
