F1 Fanatic

@prisoner-monkeys Thanks. I would’ve liked to extend the top part further as well, but the problem is you can’t go beyond the current boundaries, because of the pesky neighbours.

I like your version of Imola a lot too, as it eliminates all chicanes, but the problem is that the topography doesn’t allow you to do that, because then they would have to go over a ridge. It’s the reason they changed the original track; because cars were getting airborne at the exit of Aque Minerali and the kink where Variante Alta is now. It’s also funny that people actually complained that Variante Bassa was removed, it was pretty popular because the curbhopping was spectacular. My solution: put a fast bus-stop chicane like Variante Bassa where Variante Alta is now.
I don’t see why you would destroy a part of the park just to offset the straight between Tamburello and Villeneuve. I think Tamburello is just fine and Villeneuve can be turned into a kink again where it used to be.
Granted, there would be 3 chicanes then, but it would be a great track nonetheless.

I have some new ones as well:

Istanbul: http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=5716981

I always thought this track was perfect in it’s — relative — simplicity, if it weren’t for the tedious turns 4 and 13. So I bypassed those two.

Lusail: http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=5717002

The reason I bothered to improve this track is because in an ideally balanced F1 calendar, there’s one race on the Arabian peninsula. I think Bahrain could be made pretty reasoneably good with some simple changes, but with the civil unrest and the fact that the population is so small, I think Bahrain is not the right place to go. Dubai is the perfect place, but the Dubai Autodrome is hideous beyond repair, as is Abu Dhabi. So Qatar it is.

As for Shanghai International Circuit, I like the track, but I find it suffers a lot from Tilke’s stop and go type of straight/corner combinations.

http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=5717441

Not necessarily less fast, I’ve reduced the straight, as most cars just hit the limiter there. I’ve given it a more round feel, as I feel it would speed things up a bit.

I happen to like Fuji, but not as much as I liked to drive around on the old Fuji in Gran Turismo 4. I tried to give it a more natural look and I think it’d have a lot more of its original character this way (as with Zandvoort, if you look through some of the rough edges in my corner-drawing skillz). http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=5717449

@turini I don’t think you improved Hockenheim much, all you have done is remove the opportunity to overtake in the hairpin. Frankly, I don’t think it’s possible to improve Hockenheim without the forest section. Tilke did a pretty good job, he is not the one to blame here.

@npf1 Yes, my Zandvoort is short, but I don’t see a problem in that, it’s 4 km long, so it complies to the regulations. I also don’t see the need to expand the pits, is it really that bad that VIPs would have to walk 100 m further to reach the buffets? And if you don’t turn the Audi S into a fast kink, I don’t see why you would tighten Kumho.

Some more:

Austin: http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=5717374

- The downhill after turn 1 has been sped up, bypassing the first ‘S’ and loosening the rest, before being surprised by the tighter second ‘S’. It’s going to take a lot of skills and manhandling to get a car stopped facing the right way here.
- The hairpin before the straight is now a long double apex corner, similar to Buddh, sticking to the spirit of the track.
- The stadium section is useless, so it is bypassed, conveniently making the approach to the Istanbul section faster. The grandstands on the inside of Istanbul will provide great viewing: facing Northeast you have the hairpin, where all the overtaking will be; facing South and Southeast you have the fast Istanbul and you also get to see the cars tumble down the hill after turn 1. So, again, no need for the Hockenheim stadium.
- The part after Istanbul is now faster, making it more important to get Istanbul right. Also, the corner before the pit straight is no longer a useless hairpin.

I think this version is much more balls-out than the original, as a USGP should be. The fast sections also encourage the teams to run lower downforce levels, which is a welcome change from the usual Tilkedomes.

Silverstone: http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=5717775

Instead of turning Silverstone into a thirteen-in-a-dozen cornerfest, I would’ve gone back to it’s roots: a DIY airfield, breathing the spirit of the typically British guy-in-a-shed engineering.

- The pits have been moved to the infield. The pit straight uses the extra-wide landing strip, which should make for interesting starts.
- Continuing on the wide landing strips, we have two fast left-handers.
- I always thought Brooklands and Luffield sucked the flow out of the circuit, so I changed that part completely. Brooklands is now a hairpin, Priory is taken the other way around and Luffield is much faster.
- Finally, Stowe is returned to it’s original state and Club is now a pretty quick right-hander coming onto the wide landing strip.

I actually quite like what @turini has done with Hockenheim – especially the way he’s turned the Mercedes Arena into a fast chicane like the one in Melbourne, but I think his Kurz Kehre and Parabolika could be improved a little.

Here’s a re-imagining of the Hungaroring, which has always been something of a bogey for me – ever since I discovered the GMaps Pedometer, I’ve been trying to improve it … and I’ve never been happy with the result. This is probably one of my better ones, but I’m still not 100% on it:

http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=5717813

The first turn is a mirror of its current self, with a genlte corner feeding into a sharp one. Turn 3 has been given a greater radius to let the cars build up speed into Turn 4 – which is probably the part I’m unhappy with – while I’ve kept the awesome Turn 5 as is. Turn 6 has been sharpened for overtaking, while the chicane has been opened up. The next sequence is loosely inspired by the section is replaced, designed to increase speeds onto the bottom straight. The double U-bend has been replaced with a single ninety-degree right-hander at the top of a short, sharp climb a la COTA.

@Prisoner Monkeys – I like your version of turn 5 better than mine. I like what you did to the middle sector too but realistically the changes here would be too expensive. The idea for the last turn is good too but I think it would ruin one of the best spectator points in F1 (due to required run off areas). In my second version I made the apex a bit earlier so that there is some space for run off. Other wise my first version where you could make use of the open grass area in the last sector is also an option.

Buddh International Circuit.

http://imageshack.us/a/img9/4563/newdheli.png

With this one, I went a little bit creative. The first sector is largely similar but for turn 2 being tighter and more challenging, turn 3 is a longer radius corner but hopefully, not too slow. A long straight into a less tighter turn 4, and then it gets unusual.

Once the track exits turn 4, it climbs over a bridge and ends up at the small straight to what would have been the final corner, but the wrong direction. It’s a pretty long straight, so hopefully another chance to overtake into the next corner. It’s a double apexed, left-handed corner that is also pretty fast. It eventually rejoins the wrong way on what turn 13 used to be. It just follows the track, bypasses the Massa chicane for run-off purposes for the ex-turn-13.

The final complex starts off with a left kink into a long right, and then a small left kink (underneath the bridge) and a final left onto the pit straight. It’s not the best final sector but I needed to accommodate for the figure of 8 ;)

http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=5717964

Fuji, based on a combination of new and old features. It probably isn’t at all feasible any more, but oh well. It initially uses the fast first corer from when the circuit first appeared, giving it a unique feature in F1- a properly fast, long sweeper as a first corner. The hairpin then makes an appearance afterwards, in a similar style to the current first corner. As the middle sector of the current layout is classic and tricky, I wanted to include this, and at a similar stage, so the next stage is getting the track back in that direction, so a sweeping corner leads to a sharp 90. This isn’t so much to be interesting, but to control the speed of the cars. Alternatively, it wouldn’t be the end of the world if this was too dull and made into a single long turn. Then it runs on the existing section, and develops into something very similar to the 90′s version on the track. This avoids a slow and tedious final sector.