Duckham, named after and sponsored by the oil company, is located near Duckburg and is therefore yet another permanent racetrack in the Walt Disney Universe. As I already mentioned, I was keen on the Ducks when I first started drawing tracks, and I don't want to hide this fact because these tracks need some backstory to be written about. Still, this one is a bit weird. Duckham was built by Scrooge McDuck to run his own series on, because he didn't get along well with the owners of the major Grand Prix circuit in his home country (which in this case would be the Duckburg circuit). So, in turn, in typical Scrooge McDuck fashion, he hired only the cheapest track designers and architects to come up with this design, and bought some cheap swamp land to build it on. That's why it is no wonder this track is so spectacularly unspectacular. The only thing that makes it stand out in a way is that it has not one but four crossovers. The repetitiveness of corner shapes and parallelity of the straights clearly show that the track designers, who were hired by Scrooge weren't paid enough to develop something more interesting.
I first drew this track in about 1992 when I tried to include as many crossovers into one single track as could reasonably fit.
The main reason why Duckham wasn't part of the OtherWorld(ly) Series is not that it's in a different Universe, nor that Scrooge McDuck would charge too much to allow an event there, but that I don't really like the design anymore. It kind of reminds me of 'Divine Raceway' by fellow mytracks designer martin-1 and all its angular glory.
Track history:
As I don't really care about Scrooge McDuck's motor racing series, nor his car brand or whatever anymore, I don't know much about this track's history, apart from that it was built in the early 1990s, that it is eligible to host F1 races, too, and that every series in which a Scrooge McDuck car brand works team competed, has raced here at least once. One thing is significant though: Scrooge McDuck regulary gets money from the oil company to whom he has leased the name rights of the track.
And Scrooge McDuck's own car manufacturing company had to use this track exclusively as a testing facility for most of their road cars, to save money that would have been spent on other test tracks. Maybe that's why their handling is as bad on less repetetive terrain.
Plese bear in mind that the track map shown under the following link is a really old drawing from the mid 1990s that was done with a pen. So I must apologise for the many drawing errors. Still, I don't really want to waste my time on redrawing this repetitive beast, because I think even this old drawing brings across the concept of the track fairly well.
http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g1...g/1c8f2cb0.jpg
Lap description:
As it was built in a former swampland area, there is not much elevation change going on around the 5.7 kilometers of the Duckham circuit. The lap begins in a counterclockwise direction on the start-finish line. Cars then head down the start-finish straight, a straight which is reprised in length not only once, but a full four times. Turn 1 is a relatively quick 180 degree left-hander that's taken in 4th gear or 5th gear, depending on the quality of your car's handling. After that, the first carbon copy of the main straight follows, and the track begins to rise moderately on the run-up to the 1st crossover. You can't see the crossover yet, because of the blind crest that comes before it. After the crest, the crossover follows immediately, and the track altitude fades back slowly to level on the run-down from the bridge. At the end of the straight, there is Turn 2, a 180 degree right-hander that's just the same as Turn 1, albeit in exactly the other direction.
After that, the next straight follows, again with an equal crest just before the 2nd crossover. And at the straight's end, there is Turn 3, an exact copy of Turn 1. The straight between Turns 2 and 3 is repeated next, with the 3rd crossover coming shortly after the crest in the run-up. At the end of the straight, there is the carbon copy of Turn 2, called Turn 4. By this time, the track becomes boring if there is no traffic. Just as expected, another run-up to another small crest is next, but hey, what's that behind the crest? A 90 degree left-hander, Turn 5 (4th gear). You can try overtaking under braking here, but if you haven't made it past your opponent in one of the previous corners, chances are that you don't make it here either, since the straight leading up to Turn 5 is only about half as long as the other straights. Up next is another straight, that's slightly kinked to the right. The kink, Turn 6 is not felt at all in speed, but the subsequent hairpin, Turn 7 (1st gear, 2nd gear for some) surely is. This is not an overtaking spot, because the straight leading up to it was rather short. After the hairpin, you accelerate through the right-hander Turn 8 onto a straight with the length of about half of Duckham's standard straight. And then it's back to the scheme for your average quick 180 degree left-hander (this time it's Turn 9), after which, surprise surprise no surprise, there follows a straight, running up towards a crest just before the 4th crossover is due, which is actually the first time you're crossing this very same lap. And at the end of the straight, Turn 10 awaits you with its well known franchised design. Having gone through that, things get a bit more interesting again, but only a bit, as after the crest in the straight, there follows a copy of Turn 5 in form of Turn 11 (4th gear), another 90 degree left-hander. The next straight, which is not your standard straight, is absolutely flat in altitude and lets you pass through under the other 3 bridges that you have only seen from above on this lap. At the end of that straight, the chicane at the back of the paddock awaits you. It is a mean, tight right-left-right combination in 2nd gear, and it has a clear overtaking opportunity in its braking zone, too. That chicane was introduced during 1994 for safety reasons, because of lacking runoff in the former paddock bend, which used to be the track's only 90 degree right-hander, Turn 12. Up next is the shorter version of straights that comes along here for the 3rd time on one lap. The final corner, at its end, is once more, a 180 degree left-hander, but this time around, the corner's radius is not as big as the standard type curve, so the final Turn 13 is tighter and can be taken only in 3rd gear or 4th gear for some, if we take into account 7 gears in total. Now that you are around it, I know you can't wait to do it again, because Scrooge McDuck is contracted to pay you a standard amount fee as salary of every full lap you have completed in a race.
And yes, that is necessary, because the lap may flow well, but is really boring as well.
An aside:
This circuit is famous for luring drivers, who are having a rather lonely race, like when you're leading a race all the way from the start, and are all alone far out in front, into making silly mistakes. The repetitiveness of the 'corner - straight - almost the same corner - parallel straight - etc.' combinations that dominate the track layout is what causes this effect. When it happens, a driver either suddenly slows down just before the 2nd bridge, expecting a 90 degree corner behind the crest, or what's much worse, drivers heading straight on in Turn 5 or Turn 11, expecting the straight to continue after the crest. Such an accident even was a championship decider once during a Duck series race in the early 1990s.