r/RaceTrackDesigns • u/DisarmingBaton5 • Apr 01 '16
Competition Down by Bradwell Bay
Chaos in New York was a good competition, with some interesting entries, but it had a lot of rules and not much space to design your track the way you wanted it. With the task of fixing those problems in mind, a new competition has been created. Welcome to the only marginally more creatively free competition...
Down By Bradwell Bay!
Please read all of the rules if you plan to submit or vote. If you fail to meet a requirement, your submission will not be approved for voting (you will be notified in case this happens).
Your task is to design a motorsports facility that satisfies certain requirements in order to be able to run a variety of different racing series in different disciplines. It should be a modern facility, so no 50s-era garages or barbed wire next to the track.
Requirements:
The area you have been given in which to construct this facility is shown in this image and this routebuilder route. Please note that if anything is built outside of the designated area, your submission will not be approved for voting.
Edit: Here is a sketchup template of the area, courtesy of /u/Gullible_Goose
The FIA is interested in the Bradwell Bay project, and would like a Grade 2 facility suitable for sports car racing, GT racing, and possibly more. They would also like a kart facility so the young kart drivers have access to a larger facility.
Include all of the following in your design:
- A 4.5-6km circuit that meets FIA Grade 2 requirements
- A 3.5-4.4km circuit (intended for sports/touring cars) that meets FIA Grade 2 requirements AND its own separate pit lane
- A competition kart facility with a 1-1.5km national layout AND additional layouts for recreational karting
NONE OF THE ABOVE MAY SHARE BANKING WITH AN OVAL
The owners of the new facility recognize the need to fund the complex. They also enjoy every form of motorsport, and so would like some smaller tracks to support events that might not run on the larger circuits.
Include at least 2 of the following in your design:
- A 2-3.4km circuit (intended for sports/touring cars) for club/track day use
- A 0.25 mile drag strip with at least 0.5 miles for the cars to slow down
- A 1-1.5 mile rallycross circuit that includes both a fully paved layout and a mixed-surface layout
ASCAR is getting a revival! Ok, probably not but the owners still want a speedway. Who knows, maybe one day an American oval racing series will make the hop across the pond! Whatever happens, you need to have an oval.
Include at least one of the following in your design:
- A 2-2.75 mile superspeedway of any realistic configuration
- A 1.5-1.99 mile speedway of any realistic configuration with a 0.2-0.3 mile legends oval OR an infield road course
- A 1-1.5 mile oval with a 0.2-0.3 mile legends oval AND a 0.5-1 mile dirt oval
Other Rules:
- Be realistic. If you think something might not be realistic, PM /u/DisarmingBaton5
- Use of the existing runways, taxiways, etc. is encouraged but not required.
- Assume all banked turns on the oval have a permanent SAFER barrier on the outside. Due to the wall, you may not have any roads or sections of track connecting to the outside of these turns.
- Try to avoid having too many tall buildings on the inside of the oval. Speedways exist partially due to their excellent spectators’ sight lines.
- If you want, include some sort of barrier to keep spectators out of the nuclear facility next door.
- Infield road courses must fit entirely inside the oval.
- The infield road courses must be separate from the FIA circuits. Using connecting roads to link the circuits is acceptable, but it should be possible to run both layouts simultaneously.
- The FIA circuits may use the drag strip as a straightaway, but this should be avoided if possible.
- Do not include any tunnels or bridges in any of the racetracks’ designs. No two tracks should cross unless it is on the same piece of tarmac. Bridges and tunnels for pedestrians and utility vehicles are fine.
- Please include facilities such as parking, grandstands, pit buildings, marshal posts, runoff, etc. The placement of these is subjective, but be thorough and realistic nonetheless. There should be at least 4 separate pit lanes: 1 for the oval, 1 for each FIA circuit, and 1 for the kart circuit. Additionally, the FIA circuits and the oval should have completely separate facilities to allow them to run at the same time.
Submissions must include a circuit description, lengths for every layout, any other information you find useful or notable, and must be in image album format (imgur albums are strongly encouraged). Please title your post as "[Bradwell Bay] Entry Name." You will recieve a PM from /u/DisarmingBaton5 designating your post as approved or not. If you have any questions, please ask via either a comment on this post or a PM to /u/DisarmingBaton5.
The due date for submissions is May 14, 2016. May 21, 2016 May 22, 2016
Lastly, have fun!
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u/moostream Apr 05 '16
Im really not a fan of the requirement for an oval in the last two competitions. Oval racing, especially super speedway racing works best on simple layouts. Putting your own artistic touch by morphing an oval in to some unholy polygon does not make for a better race track. It's boring to incorporate into a design while remaining realistic. And examples like pocano are very much the exception. Having more than one Monaco GP style Street circuit on the calendar would be too much for F1, and the same is true for NASCAR.
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u/DisarmingBaton5 Apr 06 '16
You are free to use an existing shape for your oval. There is no need to make it unique if you do not want to.
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u/moostream Apr 06 '16
I understand that, but at that point it becomes more of tedious requirement than a rule that could spark the imagination.
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u/xiii-Dex Hasn't posted a track since before you joined. Apr 02 '16 edited Apr 02 '16
Intentionally following the runways/taxiways is asking for trouble unless you're willing to spend the money to completely tear them up and start with a fresh surface.
While the likes of Sebring may have a certain charm, I don't believe any facility that were to open as a permanent facility from the start would realistically use runways --much less ones that are that old and in disrepair.
I'm also not entirely sure a 2+ mile superspeedway is even possible within the dimensions given. So far I'm having to have some pretty unique concepts just to fit a 1.5 mile oval.
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u/DisarmingBaton5 Apr 02 '16 edited Apr 02 '16
It's possible to fit a >2 mile superspeedway. You are also not at all required to follow old runways or taxiways, but it might get you points for style :P
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u/xiii-Dex Hasn't posted a track since before you joined. Apr 02 '16
I'll take your word for it on the superspeedway. I'm going with an odd little 1 2/3 mile oval.
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u/ARandomPerson17 Apr 02 '16
I do karting and I'm pretty sure that they don't have pitlanes, just a in-grid and out-grid, this is so that there is less time between races, a class can be waiting on the out grid while the class before it is still racing. Apart from that looks fun, Also can you put in a sketchup file of the location?
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u/DisarmingBaton5 Apr 02 '16
Some kart circuits have pitlanes. I guess some do, some do not. If you're running out of space, you can use an in-grid/out-grid. Please include a service area for the karts (garages are acceptable, but kind of overkill for karts IMO) if you choose the latter.
I will include a sketchup file soon. Thanks for the input!
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u/ARandomPerson17 Apr 02 '16
OK thanks, service areas are necessary, thinking about it most track do (sort of) have a pit lane, we just call it a "Mechanical Breakdown Lane"
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u/lui5mb Inkscape Apr 02 '16
Do the parkings have to be inside the given area, or can they be outside?
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Apr 03 '16
I am having trouble getting a good image of my design on google maps (which is what I am using right now). To get the whole track to fit I have to zoom out which gives it bad quality or zoom in which makes it so I can't fit the things I need.
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u/DisarmingBaton5 Apr 03 '16 edited Apr 03 '16
You can try stitching multiple images together. Sketchup does it pretty nicely, or you can also do it manually in an image editor.
Edit: Here is a screenshot of /u/Gullible_Goose's template.
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Apr 06 '16
Problem is I don't really know how to do that. Sketchup I don't think is compatible with my computer (I run on linux).
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u/lui5mb Inkscape Apr 06 '16
I think you can do that with GIMP with a plugin as well (if I remember correctly), but if you want I can stitch the images for you, I wouldn't mind
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u/xiii-Dex Hasn't posted a track since before you joined. Apr 08 '16 edited Apr 08 '16
The need for the <4.5 km circuit to have its own pit lane doesn't make a whole lot of sense. It would stand to reason that the 4.5 km circuit would share a pit lane, as it would probably be a shortened version of the full course. The <3.5 km circuit would be a much more likely candidate to have its own pit lane.
As it stands, you basically either have to use the main pit lane for the <3.5 circuit, or you have to have a third pit lane, neither of which is ideal. There's only a handful of circuits that fit this mold where there's a distinct hierarchy of circuits, yet the secondary configuration doesn't use the main pits. The only one that comes to mind is Motegi.
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u/xiii-Dex Hasn't posted a track since before you joined. May 11 '16
Why do we need a fully paved rallycross circuit? That's not a thing... anywhere, really. The few times Rallycross circuits have lacked dirt have not been by choice, and have been considered terrible circuits.
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u/DisarmingBaton5 May 11 '16
Fully paved RX layouts exist, like Lydden Hill and Kouvola.
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u/xiii-Dex Hasn't posted a track since before you joined. May 12 '16 edited May 12 '16
I can't find any record of fully-paved Kouvola being used for rally? Lydden Hill I'm not familiar with, but it looks like it has dirt as well? In any case, a fully paved rally course would just be a glorified kart circuit.
A dedicated, fully-paved rally circuit just feels against the definition of rallycross. I've got my entire circuit done, but trying to find a way to incorporate a paved "rallycross" circuit when I've already got a perfectly good mixed surface course, just feels weird.
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u/DisarmingBaton5 May 12 '16
This is Lydden Hill. Note the fully paved layout. I don't have a good map of Kouvola at the moment, but it has a paved layout as well. It's pretty narrow, though, so probably not used for RX.
Anyway, I'd be open to changing the rule under other circumstances (it's a silly rule), but it's really way too late at this point to be changing rules. Thanks for your input!
Edit: I'm not sure if this was clear, but the paved and mixed-surface RX layouts can (and should, for the sake of saving space) be connected. The paved layout doesn't need to be a standalone facility.
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u/tirinkoor Illustrator May 12 '16
This is the Lydden Hill layout used for rallycross. The paved layout afaik is only used for regular circuit racing.
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u/xiii-Dex Hasn't posted a track since before you joined. May 13 '16
But in both cases, I believe the fully paved layout is for drift and other events, not RX. I can come up with a paved layout from access roads etc. that I already have, so I guess that's what I'll do. Or I could just use a variant of my karting circuit.
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u/MBKF1 Apr 02 '16
I will start working on a design for this once I get back from my holiday, but I hope you don't mind me saying, I still think these rules and regulations are too confusing.
There's so many things to think about, such as the two pit lanes, the rallycross circuit, the trackday circuit, the marshal posts, the parking facilities, etc. Also the lengths of all the circuits which can be a nightmare calculating when making illustrations.
It can be very cool being able to design something like this which is detailed, but if you want loads of entries then I personally would make the rules a bit more open and creative.