Doug has completed the first of three historic tracks for season 4.

Rouen (1957)

I talked about some of my thoughts making this track on my blog:

Part 1 http://lucidphoenix.blogspot.com/2016/11/rouen-championship-formula-racing.html
Part 2 http://lucidphoenix.blogspot.com/2016/11/rouen-track-iteration.html
Part 3 http://lucidphoenix.blogspot.com/2016/11/rouen-design-is-done.html

Would love to hear thoughts before and after this inaugural race.

That Samson corner is an interesting concept. Can't wait to see how it runs!

We're getting closer to Rouen.

I was just looking at Watkins Glen, the 3rd and final leg of season 3. It only has 66 spaces and runs fast. which means we'll most likely be done with it by the end of April.

So... Rouen: Sakes alive, at over 90 spaces, this is a loooong track. On the other hand, I see many opportunities to run 180 and even 200. Not sure I'd build a 200 car but maybe someone will. John, who was the fellow at WBC who likes to run really fast cars (Jeff, I believe)? We need to get him on this track!

Franklin may be who you are thinking of. He is notorious for 200 cars.

Yep, it was Franklin. Thanks Doug!

The second one is in. Thanks, Doug!

Castellet (1971)

When I was researching Castellet, I saw a specific length for the very long back straight and wrote that down and actually built it to scale when I started working on the track. Often straights end up shorter than real life on these tracks because corners end up requiring more spaces then they should from a game play perspective and I try to keep total track length around my scale of .069 km per space.

But Castellet's huge straight stuck and it ends up clocking in at 31 spaces long. This is actually longer than to scale because F1 counts the kink at L'ecole as a corner and decided not to make it a corner for CFR purposes so we get some extra spaces.

This is by far the longest straight I've ever had on a track. My previous longest straight was 24 spaces long at Oyama -- which had a reputation for having the longest straight in F1 when it was active.

Fun fact, right after you all voted for this as one of the tracks for next season F1 announced that they would be returning to the track in a couple years. So it will be interesting to see then how close my speeds in corners are. Although the current configuration of the track includes a severe chicane in the middle of the Mistral Straight.

Holy crap that straightaway! And thinking about it, It makes sense from a Safety standpoint that they added the Chicane in the center of the straightaway. As fun as it probably is for fans, it's a little scary, as stuff like the Practice Incident at the first Baltimore GP where Kanaan's breaks had failed going into turn 1 shows.

Estoril is done!

A very different looking beast compared to Rouen & Castellet.