Top Gear Test Track - Part One: Design

Welcome to the Christmas Project!

When I'm testing and checking cars in the "games room", I've often thought it would be handy to have a small test track rather than running up and down the loft ladder when I want to run the car.  Using some spare Scalextric track to make a very simple loop would be too easy - I wanted to make my own track this time...

So I started researching the slot car forums and scribbling different designs for a test track.  And then I remembered that Lotus had already designed the perfect test track for Top Gear.  A quick google and I had the satellite imagery with the track marked up:

I then printed a graphic version to fit the MDF board I wanted to use - 2 feet by 4 feet so it can be slid under the games room sofa when not in use.

I drew a grid over the paper and copied the track onto the grid I'd drawn on the MDF.

You can see in the image where I had originally drawn this lower down in the hope of making the board two-thirds the width but this wouldn't have provided enough space for the cars to get their back ends out, so I had to re-draw it into the centre of the board.

This is an accurate representation of the Top Gear Test Track but on the small scale I was using (not just 1:32, it's much smaller than that) the corners would be far too tight for the slot car guides.  So I had to use some artistic licence to keep the same basic shapes but adapted to ensure slot cars could get round it.