Bulgarian GP not far now

For those of you who have been following my circuit design for some time, you may notice in the various readme files that I have listed the Bulgarian GP as one of my planned releases for Rfactor. For many reasons my original riddled with corrupted files and to no anvil I did attempt to fix it.

Thanks to being made redundant from my photographic work at a museum I have a wealth of time in which I have set aside a good chunk of it to finally realising my plan and starting again from scratch, the Bulgarian GP at the proposed Sofia circuit.

I had very little to go off. In fact, I had but only one known concept drawing of the proposed circuit that even featured in F1 Racing magazine some years ago now. I do not know how long the circuit is (as in Metres / Kilometres) so I had to guess to the best of my ability as to its length and even the various elevation changes - assuming there are any at all!

Above is the conceptual photograph of the Bulgarian GP circuit situated just out of Sofia.

Above is my rendition of the circuit.

As you can see, it is not 100% accurate. Arguably, it might not even be 50% accurate, however since the whole thing has not gone ahead in reality, I feel I can have some more 'creative' freedom with the circuit design.

I have tried to remove as much 'Tilke' from the equation by making the corners a little more open then perhaps the concept art had originally suggested. Turn 14 (I am yet to finalise names of the various corners), which is the second last sweeping right hander before the start finish straight, is much shorter and tighter in the concept for example. I also lengthened the straights of turn 7 & 9 as I found with the concept version I was barely maxing 4th gear in a 1991 F1 car. Now it is certainly a 4th flat or I found that I can get it fairly high in the revs in 5th.

Have a good look at both pictures and see what you think. As always, my circuits are never meant to be 100% accurate, as I lack the skills, time, software and all that sort of thing that some truly brilliant game level / map makers have. I am however very happy that I have finally got it and almost ready for public release.

Just to put you in the picture as to how my skills have perhaps progressed since starting circuit building way back in mid 2009, below is a picture of my original 'Sofia GP' design as based on the same concept art shot as my version I a about to release - and this was my third (originally) track editing effort back in the end of 2009.

I sure have come a fair way! Look out for the Bulgarian GP circuit to be release to NoGripRacing in the coming days.

Enjoy!