Refurbishment of the Drag Strip at the Bahrain International Circuit

In 2007 GTS received a contract from the Bahrain International Circuit to engage the Penhall Company to refurbish their drag strip. For the past five years we have been exporting faster and faster dragsters to the Gulf. The Bahrain International Circuit's drag strip was deemed unsafe and all races were cancelled until the track could be upgraded. Penhall is the number one company in North America for all things concrete and all the approved drag strips in this country use them to grind their tracks. The following outlines our trip to the BIC.

Bahrain from the air. Bahrain is an Island south of Kuwait but north of Qatar and east of Saudi Arabia (it is connected to Saudia via a bridge).

Did I mention it was a Kingdom?

The Capital is Manama, and this is the Central Mosque

This is the grinder we shipped over there as it awaited us at the airport in Manama.

The airport's biggest forklift was 15,000 lbs. capacity and the Penhall Grinder was 24,500 lbs.

The little fork lift that couldn't

Two forklifts were needed to raise it, then the skid was pulled out from under and the transport truck was backed under

Here is the grinder finally on the transport truck ready for taking to the track. Notice the bow in the flatbed truck.....

Off the Bahrain track...Manama is full of new high rises, indicative of the building boom going on all over the Middle East on with $90 oil

7 am the following day we arrive at the track to unload the equipment. The track was better prepared and things move swiftly

8 Skids of various tools were required as well

This is how bad the track was

Another bad area

Closeup of the ground area

The grinding process requires 3 vehicles: grinder, fresh water truck and slurry truck to catch the waste water and ground concrete

This high powered vacumn sweeper followed the grinder and made the surface spotless

The days were usually from 7AM until 11 PM, here we are grinding well past dark

Those shiny things are diamonds in the grinding head

Nice sunset over the racing facility

View of Formula 1 track (only sanctioned facility in Middle East

Another view of Formula 1 track from top of VIP tower

Both lanes finished and ready for small machine sanding (walk behind units) to remove the ridges

This is the end result after some grinding to remove the ridges. Smooth as your basement floor

After some painting and pulling rubber, the track ready for its first race

Sheikh Salman Al Khalifa came by to inspect the final work and have his picture taken with us in front of the VIP tower