Doug updated where he is in the development of the historical Rouen track, one we'll be running here in season 4.

With his permission, I'm posting the blog entry here as well. Two reasons for this:

1. I find it damned interesting.
2. To give potential track designers some insight into the process.

Please use this forum to discuss ideas, challenges, and questions about track development. You may also directly enquire to Doug via email (doug@lucidphoenix.com) or comment in his blog.

Here's the blog post:

Rouen Championship Formula Racing Circuit Construction Begins

I am in the process of building 3 older tracks for the Redscape Championship Formula Racing PBeM. The series participants voted on which historical European tracks they'd like to see. First up is Rouen. This French track hosted only 4 Grand Prix between 1957 and 1968 but gained a reputation as a track along the lines of the revered Spa-Francorchamps.

Working on these older tracks involves a lot more guesswork on my part. I don't have the kind of comprehensive speed trap and corner speed data that I can usually find for modern tracks. But YouTube has been a god-send.

Here is a great video from 1962 that really helped me figure out what was a corner and what was not a corner and relative speeds for those corners.

We can't embed video here (oh, for the want of a phpbb programmer) but here's the direct youtube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwymhDcrDjQ

Here is a lovely map of the circuit on StatsF1.com (love that site). As I mentioned above, I am modeling the newer, longer 1957 version of the track. I'll probably work up the 1952 version at some point, but only 1 Grand Prix was run on that iteration so I'll do it another time.

Here is what I have so far. [note: blown-up image at bottom]


Image

I'm roughly 4 spaces short from my initial target. I'll see as I test if I need to add some spaces somewhere. I'm also going to have to think about width. The track is clearly pretty narrow until the road widens coming out of Grésil. My initial thought of running 3-wide from the start through Nouveau Monde is clearly wrong historically, but the 3rd lane of the 3 involved corners is basically run-off. As I test with more cars I may thin that out and see what happens.