Hello everyone! Here we are on a week where we all wait for the Daytona 24H event and a massive snowfall here in Istanbul. I have recently released the 1.0.2 update of the Racetrack Notes, so in this post, I will write about new features and changes. If you somehow have reached this post directly, you can access the application from the App Store link here.
New & improved track maps!
First of all, our track maps started to become quite detailed when Arif, who is an architect and experienced in AutoCAD / 3D drawings, joined the contributors family. I particularly wanted the track maps to be close to an actual architectural plan or illustration. The new track maps includes detailed illustrations such as kerbs, pits, access roads, and gravel traps. I will share a sample track map in PDF format on a separate link that I will create on the website, but for now I am leaving you with few screenshots.
New detailed track maps will be much more meaningful and useful with the implementation of the pinch zoom, swipe and pan gestures feature.
I have also updated most of the track maps of the existing circuits in the first version.
Here are the circuits with updated track maps so far:
Circuit de Barcelona Catalunya
Brand Hatch Circuit
Laguna Seca
Mount Panorama
silverstone
Spa-Francorchamps
New Racetracks
Meantime I keep adding new racetracks to the app every month just as I promised. Daytona was implemented earlier than my initial plan because of, you know, the Daytona 24H event in iRacing this week. Apart from Daytona, Red Bull Ring and Road Atlanta circuits are now on the app.
While I'm doing my research I usually come across interesting facts about the circuits that I'm working on. Here I'd like share with you few of the most interesting ones.
Red Bull Ring used to be a bigger and faster circuit.
As you can see in this image, formerly known as Österreichring, which means Austrian ring I suppose, was a track with faster corners before it was tweaked for F1 in 97'. It was then renamed as A1 Ring, and most recently as Red Bull Ring in 2004 when the Red Bull boss bought the track.
Daytona was originally inspired by the oval at Monza.
Charles Moneypenny, the designer of the Daytona circuit, is a name forgotten by the motorsport world. Along with the race driver and businessman Bill France Sr, they have built the modern day Daytona International Speedway. Bill France wanted a wide oval track with a bend like the one at Monza, where 3 or 4 cars could go side by side.
Daytona's oval came out so steep that they had to develop a special method for paving the track. Moneypenny later patented this method and used it on a few more American racetracks. They built an artificial lake when the water came out of the ground they dug to fill the bend with soil. They filled the gap with more water and poured thousands of fish so that the lake could live. The Lloyd Lake is still there in the middle of the speedway and it is host the powerboat racing.
Road Atlanta owners won Le Mans 24 with the Porsche 935 that they bought with the cash they earned from drug smuggling.
First of all, I would like to thank my friend Orkun Colak for pointing out the story of Road Atlanta (He runs the Backmarkers Youtube channel and Discord group). Road Atlanta has changed hands a lot during its lifetime, but one of the famous stories is that it played an important role in drug trafficking. The drug smuggling in motor sports in '70s was so popular that IMSA, whose original abbreviation is "The International Motor Sports Association", has started to be called "International Marijuana Smugglers Association". Don and Bill Whittington, who ran the runway in the late '70s, used the back straight of the circuit to land the plane which was used in the operation. They bought a Porsche 935 K3 with $200,000 cash, which they took in a duffel bag to France, and they won Le Mans that year.
You may catch (if you can) Racetrack Notes team in online races
I designed new liveries for Racetrack Notes! Our esport team have already started using new liveries on the tracks. If you'd also like to race with new liveries, just visit my Trading Paints account here and don't forget to follow me.
So that's it from today's post. Wishing everyone a great 2022!
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