Formula 1 World Tour

[AntiM4tter]

As career mode is frustrating me and to really throw some testing at the SU1 Beta I decided I needed to plan an adventure…

With the F1 season starting next month and being a big fan I’ve decided to do a world tour visiting every racetrack of the 2025 season, along with other f1 related POI’s along the way (old F1 Tracks, Factories etc). I’m not going in calendar order. I’m setting off from near home in the northwest of England and visiting the tracks in an order that makes a bit more sense. I’m going to try and use different aircraft for each leg of the trip to carry out some bug finding (it didn’t take long).

I will say straight away, i’m not obeying all air laws for this trip. Certainly many of the sites today would not be generally accessible for overflight due to their proximity to airports

So Day 1 Trip EGGL-EGBT

As there are quite a few sites to visit today and not such long distances I chose to start with the Edgeley Optica.

The closest F1 themed site to me is the Aintree racecourse. More famous now for the Grand National than Grand Prix . As the first POI is a racecourse I decided to make my starting airfield another racecourse close to Liverpool, Haydock Park. Which has a nice little grass strip in the middle of the racecourse .

Straight over to Aintree where Stirling Moss won his first F1 race, you can see the old F1 Circuit in the foreground and the horse racing track in the background.

Next onto Donnington Park. The site of Senna’s wet weather masterclass. You could never do this in real life due to the proximity of East Midlands airport. Bizarrely, the racetrack has very strict noise limits despite 737’s screaming overhead all day.

Now time to hit the 7 F1 factories based in the UK.

First up,over to Milton Keynes to the Red Bull Factory.

Next, to Woking and the iconic Mclaren F1 factory.

Mow we head North towards the bunch of factories all in close proximity to each other and the Silverstone Circuit.

Firstly to Williams F1 at their Grove site.

Enstone, the site of the former Lotus and Renault teams, currently the Alpine factory.

Then to the very non descript Haas factory (centre of pic) stuffed in the middle of an industrial estate in Banbury

Next, to the huge Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 HQ in Brackley

And finally onto the under construction Aston Martin F1 factory where Adrian Newey now resides (wonder if that’s his cottage in front of the factory?)

Now, our last stop of the day. The Silverstone track that will host the 2025 British GP.

The old Pit Straight into Copse Corner looks a bit overdeveloped.

The new Start Finish Straight seems to be missing its wing.

Finally taking Maggots/Becketts at speed, before literally flying down the Hangar Straight.

Luckily for me, and the VIP’s who attend the Grand Prix. Turweston airport is right next door, so that’s where i’m parking up for the night before I head to the Netherlands tomorrow.

Bugs wise there’s some obvious visual bugs, too many trees and floating aeroplanes on the airfield, but the only other bug I experienced was with the AI Radio that kept insisting on repeatedly requesting IFR clearance even when I cancelled it. Simple fix for that one though, AI Radio switched off.

[rottenbk]

Nice!

This was one of the first things I did in MSFS2020…super fun:

Probably time to do this again and compare.

[Baracus250]

That’s awesome!!! Would you be willing to put together a little nav map plan with waypoints at each of those sites (especially the factories) for the UK trip and share it, please?

Well done for identifying them!! I gotta do this!

Oh, and… Forza Lewis in Rosso!!!

I’ve not watched F1 for a couple of years now due to a personal drop in interest and spare time (having previously nit missed a single race since like 1987) but I’m dead excited to see what he can do for “my” team. Never thought I’d see him move there so this is going to be as epic as the Schumy days I think! Leclerc may well outdo him though, especially the first year. He’ll need to lift his game and stop making silly mistakes to do so at least!

[AntiM4tter]

Thanks for the replies. Glad to see others with enthusiasm for F1.

I’ll try and upload the flight plans each day but I have noticed sometimes when i save flight plans it drops some of the custom waypoints (would be great if we could save custom POI’s).

Very much looking forward to seeing Lewis alongside LeClerc at Ferrari. If Hamilton can rediscover his qualifying form and LeClerc can reduce his mistakes it should make for a great partnership and bring many trophies to Maranello. There’s some interesting partnerships coming up this year and I hope the closeness in competition is like the second half of last year.

Forgot to mention that I intend to fly all legs in GA aircraft, no cheating by using airliners to get from Australia to Brazil etc.

Here is the flight plan for yesterdays trip.

British-GP-Aintree-Silverstone.PLN (2.5 KB)

[Baracus250]

@AntiM4tter

when i save flight plans it drops some of the custom waypoints

Yes that is a very annoying issue with 2024 EFB at the moment. Hopefully SU1 fixes it properly.

Do you use LittleNavMap (free)? It’s much better for this sort of thing. I’d suggest using that and exporting / saving from there for reliabilities sake!

Yes indeed, it’s the first season I’ve been excited for in about 10 years I think!

[AntiM4tter]

I was trying to stick to core game as i’m testing the SU1 Beta but may have to give LittleNavMap a try if I can’t get the EFB to behave.

Today’s flight was a nice little jaunt over to the Dutch GP location with a few more UK sights to see on the way out.

As todays hop wasn’t that long, I’d originally decided to hand fly the Robin Cap 10 today. All was going well for the first 20 minutes after which I suffered a bug where single clicks of elevator trim were applying upwards of 40% changes in trim.

So i went back to the drawing board and picked an old favourite, the Cub Crafters NXCub. Still not bug free as despite the Garmin being on, I couldn’t use the radios as apparently the electrics weren’t on. I tried a full reset of the avionics but no joy. Makes for interesting times travelling over London and into Schipol but at least trimming the aircraft wasn’t sending me into a nosedive.

So, taking off from Turweston next to Silverstone, I headed south over central London towards the start of our F1 themed tour for the day.

First stop, Biggin Hill airfield. It may seem like an odd location, but back in the Bernie Ecclestone days, this was where Formula One Management HQ was and was also the site used to manage and broadcast the world feed from.

I decided to buzz the rather recognisable tower.

It is also still home to Formula One Management’s private jet G-OFOM, an Executive BAE-146. Often seen flying into airports close to the european races.

Just down the road is the one other track that has hosted the British Grand Prix. Brands Hatch.

Today I learned that they have a karting track the same layout as the “Indy” Circuit. The old GP circuit can be seen snaking it’s way through the tree’s

Quick hop across the North sea landed us at the home of the Dutch GP, Zandvoort

They seemed to manage to avoid putting any buildings on the track here but there are still a few infield cottages that have popped up from nowhere.

Today’s trip ended at Amsterdam’s Schipol airport. Given my lack of radio I decided to land at the quieter side of the airport onto Runway 14.

Tomorrow we’ll be heading to the Belgian grand prix with a few more historic F1 venues to visit on the way.