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Lost Track Racing Ephemera

A Virtual Return to Vaca Valley

YES! Rudy Dingemans wrote in to point us to his build of a raceable version of the Vaca Valley raceway; ready for you to download and run in the rFactor and GTR2 racing simulators. The track itself may continue to crumble in the lowlands outside of Vacaville, but we can climb back into our digital Cobras for another spin on this great lost American racetrack.

Rudy credits our 2009 post on Vaca Valley as an inspiration: “It was this article that originally caught my eye. And gave me the idea me to bring back this track from the dead (well, at least virtually)”. The Chicane might have brought the track to his attention, but Rudy’s build of the track looks to have far exceeded our little show-and-tell of the venue. The stills look fantastic!

I’ve spoken before about what a marvelous idea it is to use racing simulator and video gaming tools to revive the lost palaces of motorsport, and I’m overjoyed to have played some small part in bringing back another track.

Head on over to the NoGrip Racing community to download the track: either the rFactor version (which has some additional details) or the version for GTR2.

Rudy says, “Hope it will help people enjoy racing this track again, or get to know it (to drive, it’s actually a bit trickier than it looks).” Thanks Rudy, for the service you’ve done in keeping Vaca alive.

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