Imola, a new asphalt on the road to sustainability

In anticipation of the Gran Premio dell’Emilia-Romagna e del Made in Italy, the iconic Enzo and Dino Ferrari circuit in Imola has decided to transform itself into an open-air innovation laboratory.

In response to requests from F1 and Liberty Media, it was decided to introduce a new type of asphalt on the access road to the paddock, obtained in part from recycled plastics, thus embracing the path to sustainability.

Resurfacing works - © Autodromo Imola

The new technology

The Gipave technology - the asphalt’s official name - was developed and patented entirely in Italy by Iterchimica, a company specialising in sustainable road research and development, in collaboration with G.Eco, the University of Milan-Bicocca and Directa Plus.

The innovative material is obtained by mixing sand recovered from waste, ‘milled’ recycled plastic and graphene with bitumen. These are used to reinforce the new road surface, thus offering better strength and durability and consequently reducing maintenance time and costs.

"Motorsport is an essential part of the Italian sporting culture and the Imola circuit fully represents its excellence by hosting one of the most prestigious races of the Formula 1 World Championship." said Federica Giannattasio, CEO of Iterchimica. "We are therefore particularly proud to contribute to making an area such as the access road to the Paddock, which is active and operational even on race weekends, greener and more sustainable with our innovative technology that is completely made in Italy".

Gipave is already present in many other contexts, Italian and otherwise, including Fiumicino airport and the new San Giorgio bridge in Genoa.

© F1Ingenerale

Why precisely the access road to the paddock?

The decision to resurface this area was not a random one, but is the result of a strategic and conscious choice.

As underlined by Pietro Benvenuti, track manager, the area was selected precisely because it suffers the greatest structural stress due to the frequent passage of heavy vehicles.

‘We decided to resurface the road from the Rivazza entrance to the Paddock because it is the part most stressed by the transit of heavy vehicles. [...] The resurfacing is a first step for us to experiment with this technology, with the aim of being able to also intervene on the track through this innovative process, which can also be an example for other race tracks in the world.’ said Benvenuti.

© Trackdays

Some figures

Considering the entire lifecycle of the new pavement, the race track has estimated a saving of more than 78,000 kg of bitumen, 1.623 million kg of aggregates, approximately 115 lorry journeys to transport the materials, more than 1,182,125 kWh of energy and 74,000 kg of CO2eq.

This all adds up to 3700 kg of plastic that will be recycled.

All these savings will come from the reduction of necessary maintenance work.

Other special asphalts

Innovation in the field of road surfacing, however, does not stop at the Imola race track.

One example is the section of the SP501 in the province of Turin, where in 2010, a "bituminous conglomerate enriched with rubber powder" from end-of-life tyres was laid for 1.2 km.

This technology, resulting from a collaboration with the Polytechnic of Turin, not only aims to improve the structural qualities, grip and soundproofing capacity of the road surface, but also to solve the problem of disposing of the approximately 25 million used tyres that accumulate in Italy every year.

The powder used was in fact obtained by grinding about 2000 tyres, after suitably removing their metal and textile components.

© Trackdays

Italy therefore continues to show itself to be a pioneer in the field of new sustainable and innovative technologies, and the hope is to be able to put them at everyone's service as soon as possible.