The Strips With Grip – How Total Venue Concepts Brings Track Prep to the Next Level for Sick Summer
From the first Sick Week in 2022, Tom Bailey made it known that the level of track prep for drag-and-drive events was going to change. “I want people to make their best passes on Sick Week,” Tom Bailey said.
That meant bringing in help to keep a consistent surface at each track, and Total Venue Concepts (TVC) got that call.
“We’ve worked with Tom Bailey before,” said Thomas Bemis of TVC. “Doing a lot of tracks for a lot of different events gives us more knowledge and solutions, so adapting to a drag-and-drive is a challenge, but we’ve managed to get it done.”
Sick Summer Presented by TBM Brakes is a new event; how does this factor into the game plan for TVC?
“We’ve done quite a bit of work with the Cordova and Byron tracks, so we know how they work on a surface base,” said Bemis. “We’ve worked at a lot of different tracks, so it gives us a good bit of knowledge to draw from to help in getting the track right.”
Start your summer with Sick Summer! The adventure starts Monday, June 5th, and we’ll live stream the racing action each day to the Tom Bailey YouTube Channel!
“Bracket racing is popular at a lot of the tracks we visit,” Bemis continued. “So that helps a lot for having the rubber base we need to create a good surface.”
Normally a majority of bracket racing-style cars are slick tire-equipped, and the slick tire helping build the surface can be compared to having a rotator, laying down rubber.
Prepping a track involves more than what you just see on the day of the event. “90 percent of the work in track prep happens one to three days before the event,” said Bemis. “In most cases it doesn’t happen overnight.
When we come in, we assess the existing surface and usually scrape the surface. Once you have a large build-up of rubber or it’s old rubber, you need to scrape.”
Because of TVC’s experience and the ability to create better methods to work a surface, TVC now has a mechanized scraper, which can replace hand scraping, allowing one person to effectively scrape a track to the eighth-mile in both lanes in one working day.
“Ralph Mabrier will be doing the majority of prep during Sick Summer,” said Bemis. “I’ll be joining him for two of the five days.
Participants should know that the level of prep we did at Sick Week, will be present at Sick Summer.”
This means several cars recording 60 foot times below 1.1-seconds, 6-second quarter-mile runs, and the likelihood of “one-and-done” passes could be the norm.
Written by Derek Putnam. Photos courtesy of Thomas Bemis.
If you have thoughts / feedback / ideas, please e-mail us at derek@sickthemagazine.com