London Calling

 What I like about mods is that if the correct cars and tracks are available (and chances are, they are available), you can recreate any race or racing series you desire. Equally, you can do something that likely wouldn't happen in reality. For example, how about a touring car race on the closed-off streets of London?

This London street circuit is a convert from Need for Speed: Shift, developed by Slightly Mad Studios (what happened to them, I wonder?), and looking at a map of London, is actually accurate to real life. Let me talk you through a lap. You start off on York Road, where the first corner takes you the wrong way around the Odeon BFI IMAX roundabout. You then accelerate onto Waterloo Bridge, keeping an eye out for the lane divider just before the braking zone. You then loop around and dive down Savoy Street to come out onto Victoria Embankment. Hammer down, get some speed up, try not to get distracted by the London Eye across the river. There's a chicane coming up; get it right and you can carry some serious speed through, get it wrong and you'll end up on two wheels and/or in the wall. Swing onto Westminster Bridge for the third high-speed zone, and then you'll get to the sweeping left-hander at Westminster Bridge Road. Get through that, and it just a right turn to get back onto York Road and the conclusion of the fastest lap anyone's ever done of Westminster.

I feel the layout is great, and I've had quite some fun doing hotlaps with touring cars and entry-level racers. There are a few drawbacks, though: the road can be bumpy (which is to be expected), the AI just CANNOT deal with the divider on Waterloo Bridge and the kerbs can be... slightly vicious. Still, I can just imagine the British Touring Car Championship doing a special exhibition race on this track.

So here is my question. If you could set up a street circuit in any city or on any closed-off bit of public road, where would you set it up and what would you race on it?

If you fancy getting your hands on that Ford Focus that thinks it's a motorcycle (told you those kerbs were vicious), it's part of Shaun Clarke's really-quite-excellent BTCC pack. The London street circuit was sourced from GTPlanet, and can be downloaded here.