I had been thinking of suggesting this for a while but the "My R2P" changes that just went live (which look good, btw) reminded me to finally mention it.

The track maps that we use on the track info pages are pretty bare and I was wondering if maybe we could (where possible) start using the more details track maps used on wikipedia. As they are (at least in cases I have checked) available under the creative commons, there should be no licensing issues with using them, and I think most people will agree that this would look much nicer on the track page for silverstone:

Compared to this:

Furthermore (this could go in a separate thread, perhaps), we could also increase the value of the track pages by adding links to useful articles about driving the specific track, such as links to the trackpedia entry (where one exists) or the wikipedia article (which commonly has interesting info about the circuit if nothing else).

Quite a bit of work went into those "bare" track maps. Tim M and Enis D did most, if not all of them and made sure they looked good and clean...just so we could all get a good idea of what the layout looks like. Not sure maps from an outside source, especially from Wikipedia, will be considered.

Well, I appreciate that work may have gone into it. But in terms of sprucing up the features of the community (and assuming that there's no copyright issues involved), I would think R2P would put more value into enhancing user experience than preserving nostalgia.

It's true the 1st Map Image is attractive. Maybe if updating the original image it self to look simular to the 1st image.

Or display the clean one.... then if you put the mouse over it, or click it, or click some "details" link.... then the detailed version comes up.

I like the clean ones, I could care less what the corners are "named", but it is interesting.

While the names themselves may not be incredibly useful, I think getting the turn numbers in there is very helpful because then people discussing track strategy know the numbering at least for each corner. It's harder to know what someone is talking about when asking for help on "That long right hander" when they could say "club" or T10 or something...

It's more than just prettiness.

EDIT: D'OH, wrong thread.

I'm with Justin. If there are no licensing issues I don't see why the more attractive ones couldnt be used, as long as there are enough available that we wouldn't end up with half the maps in one format and half in the other.

300+ track images needed.... anyone?

We got Justin... For now :P