History

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The dream of building an HO Scale slot car track that models a real-world F1 track has been a dream of mine since the 70s. Brands Hatch in England was my dream track, having studied photos and videos of that circuit for years. After sketching the track to a scale that stock AFX track pieces would fit, it became obvious that the table would have to be as wide as it is long. No way to fit this into my mancave basement garage.

My basement garage has room for a 5' X 14' table and still give me room for other work-shop space. Studying the current F1 circuits in 2018, I started mapping out courses that were long and narrow. I started with Circuit Gilles Villeneuve in Montreal. I attended the F1 race there in 2018 and decided it may fit my space nicely. After doing the overlay it turned out requiring a table 18' long to keep the symmetry. I abandoned this idea and moved on to the next scheme.

Next I moved on to Suzuka. I loved the figure-8 layout as it makes the inside/outside lanes in a two-lane slot car track even. Same problem as Canada, but needed an even larger table.

I landed on Circuit de Catalunya in Barcelona, Spain. Perfect proportions for my 5' X 14' (1.52m X 4.27m) table, and turns out to be a very smooth driving track with its elevation changes and combination of long straights and tight technical sections.

Using an art program, I scaled the AFX track pieces to match my 5' X 14' (1.52m X 4.27m) table, and sized a map of the track to allow me to overlay the pieces over the map. Most of the stock pieces worked out very closely, but I had to custom-cut a couple corners to get the angles to look right. Photos of this technique is in the Track Design/Layout page.