22 SportsTurf | October 2012 www.sportsturfonline.com

RACE LOGOS have long beenan important part of racing.They are just as much a specta-cle for fans as they are an effec-tive advertising tool for the

sponsors. Race fans certainly take the logosfor granted and probably don’t give muchthought to how they are produced but imag-ine a big race at Daytona without the Day-tona logo front and center in the infield.

Kenny Bogner and Missouri Turf havebeen painting the Daytona logos since 1998.I have been working for Kenny for severalyears now at the Kansas Speedway and nowon the traveling crew for as many races as myday job will allow. Here is a recount of my re-cent trip to Daytona with Kenny; also withus were veteran logo painters Tony Wagonerand Kenny’s son, Justin.

After flying in to Daytona late Saturdaynight, our workweek starts early Sundaymorning. As we drive to the maintenance fa-cility located behind turn 2, I notice the 3-story high wall of earth and turf that is thestructural support for the near straight upbanking of Daytona. The backside of thetracks turn is so steep that it must be mowedwith a remote control mower.

At maintenance, after uncrating theequipment and supplies, the first task is tosort through dozens of white, plastic 55-gal-lon barrels to find the correct patterns, orstencils if you prefer, for the 2012 Coke Zero400 race weekend. Yes, I said 55-gallon bar-rels. These logos are so big that the patternsbarely fit into the barrels for shipping and

storage. The Daytona letters and flags aloneare 200 feet long and 80 feet high. This pat-tern is so large that it is in three separatepieces requiring three 55-gallon barrels forstorage.

For this race weekend, we have 11 pat-terns to layout and paint includingNascar.com, Subway Jalapeno 250, SprintCup, three Coke Zero 400’s, 7-11 Qualify-ing Day, Nationwide Dash for Cash, TNT,ESPN and, of course, the Daytona logo. Allpatterns were located except for the SprintCup and NASCAR.com. We later found outthat those patterns were still at the KentuckySpeedway and had not yet been shipped toDaytona. To anyone else, this would be amajor problem but Kenny and Justin are notconcerned. If the patterns don’t make it byWednesday, they will just lay it out usinggridlines in the grass. I am always amazedhow they can remain so calm when thingsdon’t go as planned.

Since our rental car won’t hold muchpaint, the speedway supplies us with one util-ity golf cart and a 1980-something half tonChevy pickup. This truck is perfect becausewe really don’t care if we get a little paint inthe bed or on what’s left of the seat and itruns well most of the time. Just have to re-member to tap hard on the gas pedal when itreaches 15 mph to get it to shift to second. Iguess that makes it a semi-automatic trans-mission. On this first day the old truck isloaded with staples, strings, a rolling tapemeasure, dozens of cans of white aerosolpaint and as many 55-gallons drums of pat-

terns as will fit in the rusty old bed and we’reoff to the track.

We drive under the backstretch bleachers,through an opening in the concrete wall andwe are on the track. We make a left turn to-wards turn 2. As we approach the turn, I wastruly in awe of the steepness of the banking.I really think that if we drove the old Chevyup the banking, we would almost immedi-ately start rolling over right back down to theapron. There was a track services crew replac-ing foam behind the safer barrier. It is sosteep; they had to use a telescopic forklift toreach up to the wall from the apron to pro-vide support as they worked at the top of thesteep bank.

We continued our trek around the famoustrack until we reached the 7-acre infield. Iturned off the noisy old truck and then heardnothing. The track was strangely quiet con-sidering there would be a major racing eventhere in about 120 hours. Daytona GroundsManager, Sam Newpher, had the bermuda-grass perfectly cut to about ¾ inch. Kenny’sfirst task is to lay out and string the centerlinethat stretches from pit entrance to pit exit,parallel to pit road through the infield. Then,using the start/finish line as the center lineperpendicular to the string, he measures to-ward pit entry and again to pit exit to set lo-cations for each of the massive logos. TheDaytona logo is set in the middle and belowthe string line, the Coke Zero logos are on ei-ther side of the Daytona logo and centeredon the string line and all other logos are out-side of each of the Coke Zero logos and

Facility&Operations | By Jody Gill, CSFM

PAINTING DAYTONASPEEDWAY LOGOS

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24 SportsTurf | October 2012 www.sportsturfonline.com

Facility&Operations

above the string as viewed from the bleach-ers.

Now that we have the logo locations, it’stime to roll out the patterns. As we struggleto pull the huge sheets of carefully folded androlled plastic out of the barrels, we are over-come by the stench of stagnant water that hasbeen sealed in the barrel for months whilestored in the Florida heat. There is no timeto dry out these patterns; we have to putthem away wet.

After we unfold the pattern, we pull ittight against the string and center it to themark. Then pull the corners tight and stapleone side. Then one of us will start staplingthe top side and another will staple the bot-tom, then the other end. Once stapled tight,we “dot” the pattern with white turf paint.When complete, the plastic sheet pattern isimmediately removed. The patterns are al-ways folded the same way for storage whichmakes it much easier to lay out. Folds are al-ways left to right toward pit exit, then rolledtoward the bleachers. This process is repeateduntil all patterns have been dotted in thegrass.

Due to the heat and bright sun, we wantto finish the layout before lunch to avoidburning the grass through the clear plasticsheeting. The next step is to string all straightlines within the logo. Kenny believes that thelogo should look as good at ground level asit does from the bleachers or the press boxcameras or even from the blimp. He does notlike crooked lines. All straight edges arestrung as are the tops and bottoms of all let-tering. This really is the difference in an av-erage looking logo and a masterpiece. Themany tight strings are one reason why it isvery important to wear high top, waterproofboots when painting logos with Kenny. Ofcourse you want to keep your feet dry butalso to keep from getting your ankles cut bythe strings when you trip over them.

The rest of the day is spent sprayingwhite paint. We run 2 guns from each pumpso we are always working in pairs on eachlogo. While spraying white, we will dust theareas that will be yellow with white as a basecoat since yellow does not cover green grassvery well on its own. By just dusting theseareas, it is still easy to see the edges of theareas that will be painted yellow later. We willspend the rest of Sunday painting white. Atthe end of the day Sunday, we put the pumps

and tips in water and switch to the really im-portant work of exercising the huge bass inLake Lloyd.

LONG WEEK AHEADWhen we arrived at 7 am Monday, I was

surprised to see that the Florida humidityhad turned our bright white logos to a dull,almost light gray shade. I could tell this wasgoing to be a long week! It is still quiet onthe track except for the occasional clank ofa dropped tent pole and the low drone offorklifts and trucks coming from the parkinglots outside the track. One pump waschanged to yellow and the other to red. Eventhough it is fairly easy to change to differentpaint colors on these airless machines, it iseasier yet to just move the pump from onelogo to the next painting the same color ateach logo.

While Justin and Tony moved throughthe infield painting yellow at each logo,Kenny and I stayed with the two Coke Zerologos painting red then we moved our pumpto the other logos painting the small amountof red in each of them. With such largelogos, it is important to apply paint veryevenly and as lightly as possible. When fin-ished, we want the logo to look like a uni-form carpet of color. This means we mustavoid “caking” the paint on the grass bymisting on the paint from multiple direc-tions. This is tricky, especially along theedges of letters and shapes.

With almost 60,000 square feet of logosto paint in 4 days, there is no time to useboards to create crisp edges. Instead, we musthave a steady hand on the gun and always beaware of where you are in the huge sea of col-ors. When Justin and Tony finish yellow, theyswitch to light blue. Kenny and I are in redmost of the day, switching to black to finishthe day. But of course, the day is not com-plete until Lake Lloyd provides more lunkerlargemouths.

Tuesday morning, the track is no longersilent as the seemingly endless fleet of trac-tor-trailers arrives to unload and mount tireson wheels. Network people have now in-vaded the space around our 7-acre island ofart to string cables and mount cameras andmicrophones. Kenny and I stay in black mostof the day while Justin and Tony finish bluesthen switch to black also. The winds have re-ally picked up today. When you are trying

hard to mist paint wind is your enemy espe-cially with black paint. All colors are nowfirst coated and since another mist coat is yetto be done, some black overspray will notcause much of a problem. However, it is im-portant to avoid the overspray onto the greenbermudagrass by spraying into the windalong the unpainted edges.

It’s Wednesday morning, July 4, and theDaytona International Speedway has becomea city in itself both inside and outside thetrack. Network trucks, race team souvenirtrucks, exhibit trucks, RV’s and tents are fill-ing the space around the outside. The infieldhas swollen with team haulers, drivers’ motorcoaches, more network trucks andNASCAR’s fleet of support trucks and equip-ment. NASCAR officials are measuring andsetting up timing equipment, walking thetrack to inspect the asphalt and the walls.Safety trucks and jet dryers are arriving fromTalladega, Charlotte, Chicago and Michigan.Tour trams are passing through pit lane andwinding around to the start finish line soeager tourists can take pictures in front of flagstand. No one in this city has taken this hol-iday off, especially the tired and sore logopaint crew.

By the way, the Sprint Cup andNASCAR.COM patterns are still missing 48hours before the track goes “hot,” the entireleft side of the infield remains void of logos,Kenny remains cool while me and everyoneelse in this temporary city wonder how hecan possibly pull this one off. Justin and Tonypressure up their pump to go from blackpaint to clean water then back to white. Theywill start the second mist coat of white oneverything. This coat of white is critical es-pecially for the giant Daytona letters. Thiscoat must be applied lightly and very evenlyso the letters do not show different shades ofwhite.

As Kenny is preparing to lay out and handoutline the remaining logos, an Angel arrivesfrom the shipping and receiving building todeliver two 55-gallon drums filled with thepatterns for the remaining logos. I noticedKenny kneel down and rest his head in hishand. He said he was just stretching his backbut I know what he was really doing! Justinand Tony arrived quickly to help us lay outand “dot” both patterns. I had been doingsome time lapse video work earlier in theweek, but here was an opportunity to set up

the camera once and get time lapse of a veryfamous logo from green grass to final coat inone day.

We put our pump to white and paintedwhite on both logos followed by yellow, red,blue and black to complete both logos beforelunch. The pit road rumor mill was very busytalking about how Kenny’s new laser devicethat was mounted on a tripod along the crashwall above the Sprint Cup logo enabled himto complete that logo in just a few hours. Wedecided to let the rumors run wild!

After lunch, we put our pump back towhite so we could make sure that all thewhite was second coated in the same day toensure uniformity of brightness throughoutthe infield. We finished early and it was a hol-iday, so of course the only thing left to do iscatch more bass in Lake Lloyd before headingback to the condo to enjoy fireworks on thebeach.

We had been getting occasional rainshowers and the intense heat created the needfor Sam to run irrigation Wednesday night.The combination of irrigation, rain and hu-midity makes it very difficult to hold somecolors, especially red, yellow and black. Withwhite second coated and stable, we decidedto repaint all red, yellow and blue on Thurs-day morning. After lunch, we had to finishpainting and clear the infield of all of ourequipment and paint buckets since practicesand time trials would begin bright and earlyFriday. We decided that Friday night, afterthe Nationwide race, we would re-paint allblack in addition to repairing any logos thatget hit as a result of spins or crashes to beready for the Sprint Cup Race Saturdaynight.

We were finally able to sleep late Fridaymorning to rest and recover. Since Sunday,we have loaded, hauled, carried and sprayedmore than 320 5-gallon buckets of paint. At50 pounds per bucket, that is 8 tons of paint.It was time to rest. Kenny flew back toKansas City to layout and cut new patternsfor clients leaving the three of us to deal withthe logo carnage that usually results from thetypical Daytona “big one” crash. While therewere plenty of crashes and the “big one” atthe start/finish line, only 2 logos were dam-aged so we were able to repair damage and re-paint black in all logos by 2:00 am Saturdayto end the work week.

Every race and every different logo has

been a new learning experience for me andDaytona is no exception. Working withKenny and his crew at multiple tracks includ-ing Kansas, Richmond and Daytona, I havea new respect for this job. Our crew mustmake sure every logo looks perfect no matterwhat the condition of the turf and every trackis different. Kenny and Justin have workedhard to develop and teach us new methods

that reduce the amount of paint needed,minimize damage to the turf and deliver topquality logos. ■

Jody Gill, CSFM is the Grounds Coordi-nator at the Blue Valley School District inOverland Park, Kansas. He can be reached at913-239-4121 or email at jgill@bluevalleyk12.org.

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