When I rebuilt the permanent circuits, I wanted the Nordschleife to look right to anyone who knows the real place. It's one of the most famous tracks in motorsport, and at 20.8 km it's far longer than any other track I rebuilt, so I didn't want to draw it by eye.
The track comes from OpenStreetMap, the free world map that volunteers draw and keep up to date. Someone there has traced the whole 20.8 km loop through the Eifel forest. I took that line and smoothed out the small wobbles that hand-drawn map data always has. Then I stretched it by about half a percent so one lap matches the official length of 20,832 meters.
Turning a map line into a race track took some care. A map doesn't know how fast a car can go, and a few of its bends are tighter than any car could take. I gave every corner a sensible minimum size and checked that the famous ones kept their character. The Karussell is still tight. Aremberg and Adenauer Forst still slow you right down, and Hatzenbach still flicks left and right through the trees.
How close is it? The loop is more than 6 km across. The track stays within about 60 meters of the mapped road, and every named corner sits within 40 meters of its mapped position. That's close enough to recognise each section from above, but it isn't precise enough to navigate a real car.
The lap is long, so Career runs it as a single lap.
Big thanks to the OpenStreetMap volunteers whose work made this track possible. The track uses their map data, © OpenStreetMap contributors, under the Open Database License.