I spent about 7 hours creating a grueling, intense, and yet still entertaining 5.01-mile custom track to tune cars. I clandestinely named it "Toscana Test Track" as not to give away it purpose, well I let a friend see it and a cult following formed. I host an online room usually 3-7 nights a week (less lately due to reasons that will become clear momentarily) and every day this is the ONLY track my tarmac racer friends request. They have forgotten that Top Gear, Nurburgring, or any other track even exists; when I'm online it must be that track for hours on end! The problem is: I created it NINE MONTHS AGO! I literally deleted every other tarmac course I made, no one ever wanted to drive on them. Now if I'm online, I have 20 or so hillclimb-style dirt courses and several snow, I'm so sick of that track I don't even want to see paved road at all! I went to college for racecar mechanics and technology, so when I wanted THE track that tortured and pushed every possible limit as a comprehensive tuning grounds I knew what it had to be like (getting GT5 to make it was another story haha). I didn't know it would be so good that when I suggest Nurburgring to the room I'd be greeted with disgust and more requests for some custom playground never even intended to be raced on!
The track itself holds 2 separate straights over 0.75 miles each, a stock Ferrari is going to pushing 170mph (usually the up into the 180 range on the back straight because it's downhill) in two different places and a good flying start lap in a supercar will come in under 3:00 even at 5.01 miles long. It's a fast track but there are sharp blind downhill corners to test braking, sweepers suddenly crest and drop mid-corner so you better not be bottoming out or else you shoot wide off the track, there is one very nasty off-camber uphill section immediately after a hairpin where poor LSD settings either have you shooting wide or losing traction and sliding down the slope, the back straight suddenly kinks into a 3rd gear S-curve then another dropping hard corner so bad camber settings leave you either unable to slow down in time or suddenly losing losing traction and going off, there's an infamous 80-100mph banked sweeper (depending how big your balls are) that has hard bumps right after the apex when everyone is on the throttle all the way so if you bottom out you're doing a 180, and my favorite is in the final corner (3rd gear unbanked left-hander, never seen this on any other track I've made) as you're you're exiting the corner and already smashing the throttle for the main straight you'll find a nearly invisible speed bump that checks those LSD settings one more time or else you just went from 1st to 4th with no room to catch up.
It's an excellent track, but now I mostly blame my 1500-car garage lagging everything (which it truthfully does) as the reason I don't race tarmac online anymore. My test tracks are three custom (and incredibly detailed) hillclimb-style tracks, two dirt and one snow since I'm sick of tarmac, that will remain unseen by anyone that isn't me just so I don't get another frenzy on my hands (I'd probably quit playing GT5). Doubtful with so few rally drivers, but I've got over 20 more that are just as good, I just kept 3 for myself that contained all of the elements I need to consider when tuning.
Yep, Trial Mt. for me too...
