What's going on with those runoff areas? What purpose do they serve? They're not at all oriented to the direction of the circuit and they are literally just creating barriers at 90 degrees to the track to crash into at enormous speed.
I can fix those, if possible could you give me a little illustration for help? Runoff areas are a bit of a weakness for me in the design. I assumed at the end of hard braking zones you would want a deep runoff.
For runoff areas you want something like this (just eyeballing, not exact).
You have a lot of "blob" shaped runoffs, with unnecessary areas on the outside of corner entry, and at the end of your gravel traps you have barriers that angle dramatically back towards the track. You want to avoid perpendicular angled barriers on corner exit, because if a car goes off the track mid-corner that's where the car will end up, creating a nasty crash (especially bad for bike racing). The barriers need to taper back towards the track much more gradually.
If you need real life references, I recommend taking a look on google maps/earth at Grade 1 circuits, like Sepang, Bahrain, Shanghai or CotA. Silverstone and Barcelona are also good references for corner exit runoff as they've reprofiled theirs in the last 15ish years to be safer for motorbikes in particular.
One thing that can be very helpful is uploading an aerial image of a modern FIA Grade 1 or FIM Grade A track and recreate the runoffs by drawing over it. It will give you a clear idea of why runoffs are the way they are
If I can be bothered I'll draw some illustrations when I'm not on my phone, but quickly, think about these factors:
If a car hits a concrete or other rigid/semirigid wall (guardrail, SAFER barrier)at a low angle, it's very routine, it just safely bounces down the road regardless of speed.
If a car hits a soft wall (tyres, tecpro) angle at a low angle and high speed, it can be much worse than concrete, because the car is stopped and if it's close to the track the car may bounce onto the racing line which is a very dangerous scenario.
If a car leaves the track at high speed heading towards a barrier at a high angle, then you need a tyre or other soft wall and space to slow down.
because of the above factors, the transition from a large runoff to a straight with the barriers close, is a potential hazard if the wall comes back to the track at a severe angle at a location where cars are going st
is your circuit going to host high level motorcycle racing? Motorbikes have different runoff requirements to cars. Generally they need more, you can't have riders regularly reaching the walls. Racing lines are different so also need to consider the way motorbikes ride down a straight into a corner – they start on the inside and cross the track in the braking zone to the outside to get the bike leaned over.
Very fair I'll keep those thoughts in mind. The tool i'm using right now likes to mold the runoff back to the edge so I'll try to tweak it so it's more generous.
Needs more fan experience areas, maybe some less trees. Trees in Florida trap humidity. Just something to think about. Looks great though, like a more reasonable Jeddah circuit.
I built this with an app I'm developing for track design! This is version 1. Once I feel comfortable with it I'm going to release it for free for anyone to use
I'll make sure to post to the community if the mods allow it! It's also going to have a lap simulation mode that i'll be posting in the comments here shortly.
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u/Mrwaflz55 10d ago
I love the random-ass grey block office tower for a pit building. Very American.