In this newsletter, as part of our ongoing series of progress updates, we’d like to tell you a little bit about our quest to find the perfect paving formulation for our road course. 

We are currently conducting our own research to find out the perfect blend of our pavement for the driving course at Magarigawa—or what formulation of pavement will help us realize our goal of providing our members with a road surface that works for you, the driver, your car, and your tires. We hope to find the perfect formulation, providing you with a pavement that is not just safe and long lasting, but also lets you truly enjoy the thrill of driving on it.

We’ve been working with the professionals at Maeda Road Construction to get the formulation just right. At their research center, they prepared quite a number of laboratory formulations for us. And what we wanted to show you here are some photos from our visit to a test course at JARI, or the Japan Automobile Research Institute, which is in Ibaraki Prefecture.

As part of our research, we tried out two different test courses, each with its own unique purpose, qualities and features.  

There we were able to better study the formulations prepared for us by the team at Maeda Road Construction and compare their data with the feel of an actual track pavement by conducting 3 types of pavement tests to gather data and by driving Ferrari 355B and 458 Speciale that were produced almost a quarter of a century apart.

We used these vehicles to explore the two most important variables when it comes to road surface: grip and smoothness. In obtaining quantitative values for these two variables, we now have some numbers that we can work with, or goals for what we want to achieve with the paving of our own road course.

As you can see in the photo here, in order to measure the IRI, which is used to indicate the smoothness of a road surface, one of the engineers had to actually push the measuring device—continuously with the same amount of pressure at a speed of 4km/h!

While we still have time before pavement work begins at the site, we want to use the time we have now to make sure that we get the paving done just right as there is no second chance when it comes to paving a race track. We are carrying out our own simulations on different paving formulations as well as inspecting various road surfaces as part of our effort to ensure that the pavement at our site will be suitable for our needs. Using the findings from our research and taking into consideration the unique topography and bedrock at the site, we will continue to experiment with different levels of asphalt quality and materials mixtures as well as with different types of paving equipment and settings for each machine in order to provide you with final results that we can feel confident about.