Details Matter, or How OCD Leads to Better Results.

I thought this art project would be easier. As a driving instructor, I created many of these maps for use with my students. I'd print out corners to teach my students how to approach a turn, when to brake, turn in, where to apex and positioning the car at the exit. We'd doodle in lines to illustrate what we were doing and what needed to be done. For this, precision and scale are extremely important. For many of my local tracks, I'd stitch together satellite images to drawn in the most accurate map. This is incredibly tedious, often requiring several dozen images to be arranged just to make a template for my vector drawing.

Interestingly, when you really start measuring tracks from actual satellite imagery, you can tell whether a track was built before or after GPS construction techniques. Older tracks like Road Atlanta or Roebling Road have more variation in the width of the track, usually just a couple feet here and there. Later tracks were laid out using GPS, and it really shows. Tracks like Barber Motorsports Park and Atlanta Motorsports Park are extremely consistent. This makes drawing maps a bit easier, but I still capture all the detail that I can for my student handouts or classroom slides.

Having said all that, I believe it's more important to capture the intent of the track than it is to be accurate when it comes to art. When you are dealing with a track that is several miles long but only 30 feet wide, an accurately scaled track would be just a hairline at the size of wall art. Many subtleties are lost when scaled down. For MyTrackMaps.com, I went with a nice thick track section, 8mm wide. Proportionally, this results in a track about 100 feet wide. It's a design choice I made to give the track a strong presence on your wall. It's clearly visible at typical viewing distances, and casts a lovely shadow. Staring at my wall takes me back into my personal experiences at those tracks: the lovely echos walking in the tunnel in Monaco, the great friends we met at Turn 6 at the Canadian Grand Prix, the truly epic night battle I had on the high banks of Daytona, and that time I slammed into the wall at Road Atlanta.

Some track details don't scale well. In particular, places on the track that closely parallel each other can get crowded when scaled up. The hairpin at Monaco is a perfect example.

Some corners need to be moved slightly to accommodate the width of the track. I'll subtly shift parallel parts of a circuit to maintain the visual feel of the track.

An example of track art that closes up in tight turns and closely parallel sections.

My version of the historic Monaco circuit. Beau Rivage is well spaced from Tabac, and The Hairpin is clearly captured.

This can also be a problem for case of extremely large tracks, like Le Mans and the Nurburging; the details would get lost without some artistic license. These are massive race tracks, with Le Mans about 9 miles and the full Nordschliefe around 14 miles. The chicanes on the Mulsanne would all but disappear on a 10 inch piece of artwork. The legendary Karoussel would just be a tiny blob on a proportionally sized map. So I scale these up to match the spirit and feel of the track.

Part of an upcoming MyTrackMaps.com Endurance Collection, my Circuit de la Sarthe in Le Mans captures the chicanes on the legendary Mulsanne Straight.

Being consistent in the width of the track is also an important detail that is overlooked. It's rather easy to just scale up the art and wind up with inconsistent line weights. This was alway a pet peeve of mine, and one of the main reasons I got my own vinyl cutter. I keep a master set of vector track art so I can properly scale the stroke of the track to match a given collection.

Different line weights in this artist's work feels less cohesive when displayed together.

This shop's art has wildly different track widths, perhaps best suited for individual display.

Surface finishes are also an area that I spent an embarrassing amount of time on. 3D printing has made great improvements over the last few years, and it's gotten to an impressive quality point. There are a lot of print settings that can be used to improve surfaces and fine details like small type. Basically, you have to go slow, test and refine.

This track art has strong 3D printing artifacts and a rough surface texture.

MyTrackMaps.com features smooth textures and fine details that hold up under close inspection.

I tested setting after setting, and tried several different build plate textures until I was satisfied with the result. Small type is still something most people don't even attempt. But process optimization was something I did professionally throughout my manufacturing career. The final production process isn't fast, but when this track art is proudly displayed on someone's wall for many years, a few extra hours spend on printing really doesn't matter. As the saying goes, I'd rather apologize for the price than make excuses for the quality.

Eventually, paying attention to all those little details added up. Everything took far longer than I expected. Even the simpler tracks that I had existing art on, like Road Atlanta, turned into several hours to get all the details right. Sometimes I'd get all the way to 3D printing what I thought was the final product, only to find a slight detail that needed a tiny tweak. Sometimes a turn isn't quite smooth enough, other times the typography isn't quite right. Every track took several iterations before becoming available on MyTrackMaps.com. And despite the massive advances in 3D printing, final products aren't always consistent. For multi-color prints like this, quite a few prints will fail my quality control.

Details matter at MyTrackMaps.com, and nothing can replace the authenticity of actual photography. No AI-generated photos here.

George Lucas said movies are never finished, just abandoned. That's more than a little ironic, because he's notorious for changing his films long after the went public (Han shot first, dammit). Art is the same way, but I feel that the seemingly endless iterations is effort well spent. Sitting back in our little house with my partner Stacy, I find myself staring at these tracks all the time. Unlike Lucas, I don't feel that I'm abandoning them if I get them just right. It's completely worth it.

Always STAY ON TRACK, my friends.

-Benson