The TC Track Guide

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240^drift

240^drift

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I have been using the TC as a testing track for every element to my cars.
The TC (Tsukuba Circuit) is very under-estimating.

At this track every corner has a different angle, and length.
This track is about 1.2 miles long with a 437 meter straight length in the back.

Below is a diagram of the TC:
circuityj8.jpg

The TC was built in 1970, it wasnt much till the early 90's when a group of talanted Automotive Tuners came togather to build the fastest car on the TC.
A FR RX-7 landed on a 47'886.

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Comparing it to GT4
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My fastest car on the TC got to 51'661, and that was with the Nissan Skyline GT-R VSpec 3 N1 '00.

Than for my FF test i used the Gathers civic i reached a 1'06"813.

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On every race in GT4, the TC starts out on a rolling start, leaving you with an advantage at the Starting lines to pick up speed before Turn 1. Usually a normal car can take the turn 3 (the widest turn on the TC) around 60-90. Coming out of the turn onto the Straight you have nearly 200 meters before approaching turn 1. As you approach turn 1, down shift into 1st, and maintain the 1st gear until you accelerate out of the apex. Use the Side skirts on the left of turn 1 to get optimal speed.

Now you will be approaching the S~turns, there are side skirts on each curve, you could practically can go straight by riding up and onto the side skirts without catching onto the grass. The S~turn could be taken at around 2nd-3rd gear depending on your car and your car's gear ratio's.

You will be slowing down to turn 2 than. Down shift into 2nd and maintain low rpm's into the turn than accelerate out of the apex into the smallest straight on the TC. You will hit a underestimated turn that has been easily disregarded before. You could nail the turn at around 3rd gear (depending on the above) and take it easy because a little slide could toss ya into the grass.

As you come out of the Turn 3 shift up into either 3rd or 4th and then you will gradually coast into an easy turn, slide all the way out into the sideskirt for optimal speed. Than you come into the hairpin turn, down shifting into 3rd or 2nd, brake all the way into the apex and than accelerate out onto the big long straight.

As you come onto the straight full throttle is maintained at 5th-6th gear until you come nearly 20-40 feet away from turn 5, down shifting into 4th or 3rd. Maintaining a speed of 60-90 is critical on this turn and on the correct line to safely carry out the apex.

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*This was my TC Circuit Guide.
Please comment with only positive critism or comments. And please nothing negative I worked very hard on this.
Thank you
 
Good write up, but this probably belongs in the Race Reports section, or somewhere of that nature. Very descriptive, good work!
 
Not a negative here, but i feel that different cars need to use different racing lines, so your guide may not apply to some people. However a good report.

I too used to use Tsukuba as my test track until i found how unforgiving some of the bumpier tracks can be with a Tsukuba setting, so i moved off to Autumn Ring Mini Reverse, it's shorter and rougher, with quicker changes of direction at high revs, and keeps you interested every lap because there's no long boring straights.
 
SUROKIA
Learn To Spell
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Learn grammar. "To" and "Spell" should not have any capitalized letters in them. People in glass houses and all that. 💡

@ 240 drift. You seem to have the hairpin and turn 4 mixed up.
 
An interesting read, its a subject that I love to explore myself.

In a similiar vein the following may be of interest, its from the second of my GT4 Tuning Guides and covers circuit corner rating, a quite common tool for real world tuning and driving that can easily be used in GT4.

Reading the Circuit
The Theory
When driving or tuning a car for a specific track it very quickly becomes clear that certain corners are more important than others are. These important corners are the ones that can make or break a good lap time or really push the car to the limits of is potential.

While it is perfectly possible to discover these corners through track time and trail and error is quite handy to be able to identify them early on and be able to focus on them from the start of tuning or driving.

Various methods have emerged over the years for prioritising corners on a track, the one I use is based on a method first outlined by Alan Johnson in his 1971 book ‘Driving in Competition’.


He proposed that when you look at a track you would find only three types of corners:

Type 1 - One that leads onto a straight
Type 2 - One that comes at the end of a straight
Type 3 - One that connects two other corners

Type 1 corners are of more importance than Type 2 corners, which in turn are more important than Type 3 corners.


Over the years various people have taken this method and revised it further, each adding a little more to it.

One of the most commonly used variations (and my preferred one) Is to then break each of these three corner type down further into fast, medium and slow corners. With fast being the highest priority and slow the lowest.

The reasoning behind this is two-fold. First you have more time to gain or lose on a fast corner, corner at 90% of the car’s limit on a 50mph corner and you are doing 45mph, do the same on a 100mph corner and you are doing 90mph. You lose and extra 5mph on the faster corner by being the same amount under the cars limit. This is of course even more critical on a corner that leads to a straight, as it will have a huge effect on the maximum speed you can reach on the straight.

The second reason behind sub-dividing corners into speeds is that generally people will be slightly more cautious on faster corners than slower ones, so if you can master them you have an advantage over a more cautious driver.


This now gives us the following corner rankings, from most important to least important.

Type 1a - Fast corners that lead onto a straight
Type 1b - Medium corners that lead onto a straight
Type 1c - Slow corners that lead onto a straight
Type 2a - Fast corners that come at the end of a straight
Type 2b - Medium corners that come at the end of a straight
Type 2c - Slow corners that come at the end of a straight

Type 3a - Fast corners that connect two other corners
Type 3b - Medium corners that connect two other corners
Type 3c - Slow corners that connect two other corners

When a corner could fall into two different types it will always be of the higher ranking.

Grand Valley Speedway - An Example
Now let’s take a look at a track in Gran Turismo 4 and apply our ranking system to it and for this example we will be using the Grand Valley Speedway.




1. This could be either a corner at the end of the main straight or the corner before the next straight. As already mentioned it will always fall into the higher ranking so this is a Type 1c – Slow corners that lead onto a straight.
2. This high speed chicane is made up of corners that link other corners and as such it is a Type 3a - Fast corners that connect two other corners.
3. As with corner 1 this hairpin could fall into two categories, so it again goes into the higher one, so is a Type 1c – Slow corner that lead onto a straight.
4. This left hander is quite clearly a Type 2b - Medium corners that come at the end of a straight.
5. This very slow complex is a Type 3c - Slow corner that connect two other corners, and while tricky is rarely critical to overall laptimes. It is in fact the lowest ranking section of the track.
6. The left hander after the slow complex leads onto a short straight and as such ranks as a Type 1b - Medium corner that lead onto a straight.
7. This quite tricky left hander is a medium corner at the end of a straight and as such ranks as a Type 2b - Medium corners that come at the end of a straight.
8. And it leads straight onto this quite important corner, a medium right hand corner before a nice straight over the bridge, ranking as a Type 1b - Medium corners that lead onto a straight.
9. This fast sweeping right hand corner through the tunnel section ranks as a Type 2a - Fast corners that come at the end of a straight, and requires good throttle control to get around without running wide.
10. A tricky one to class this, at first glance its potentially a set of linking corners, but it does lead onto a straight, so it goes in the higher class. It’s a Type 1c - Slow corners that lead onto a straight.
11. The final corner of the Grand Valley Speedway and a very high speed corner leading onto the longest straight on the circuit. The single most important corner on the track and the only 1a - Fast corners that lead onto a straight.

So if we apply our new ranking system to our map of Grand Valley Speedway its looks like this.




Now I’m quite sure that some of the people reading this will by now be saying, “that’s rubbish corner x is a Type xx corner”, and that’s fine by me. The point of this section and the above exercise is to get you thinking about the very process of corner ranking. As I mentioned at the beginning the above method has been adapted and tweaked over the years for different people, and that’s fine. Because more than anything else the simple act of thinking about the circuit itself and how one corner relates to the next and to your overall time is the single most important thing.


I hope that the above is of interest, its taken directly from my second GT4 tuning guide, which can be found (along with the first guide) in the thread linked in my signature.

Regards

Scaff
 
Good job 240^drift! 👍
Take note of the minor criticisms and make a couple of adjustments and you'll have an excellent post there!

Scaff, another great post. 👍

+REP for both of you! :)
 
SUROKIA
Learn To Spell
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Learn to shut up.

Anyways, 240. Nice write up you have there, I haven't really took very much interest in Tsukuba. I guess I can give it a shot but the track is too smooth and too flat. After a while it gets a little boring.
 
The RX7 you are speaking of has a time of 57, not 47 seconds, as the world record areound that track is a 51.*** by Keiichi Tsuchiya in the ARTA NSX.
 
DLRgian
Learn to shut up.
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While I can understand the desire to post the above, the issue had already been dealt with quite well by a member of staff and as such additional comments are more likely to cause further problems that anything else.

Thanks

Scaff
 
Thank you very much, should have a track guide for the Sarthe w/ chicans (sorry if I spelt it wrong) by either this friday or saturday.
 

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