Track Guide 2: Amaroo Park 1967

Exiting Cattai Curve, looking down towards The Cutting

AMAROO PARK 1967

New South Wales, Australia
Length: 1.20 miles (clockwise)
Max grid: 24
Laps: 3 to 60

Amaroo Park, in full Amaroo Park Raceway, was a relatively short-lived track in what are now the western suburbs of Sydney. The circuit opened in 1967, and this is the era replicated by the GT Legends version – which, like a number of GTL tracks, started out in Grand Prix Legends. The real Amaroo existed for just over three decades, closing in 1998 as a victim of the Australian Racing Drivers Club’s financial woes in the late 1990s. The ARDC had spent heavily promoting the Bathurst 1000’s foray into Super Touring, a formula which lacked the same mass appeal in Australia that it had in Europe and South America.

Yellow text added by me

Driver aids

Amaroo Park is another of those short tracks that packs a lot of variety into its compact dimensions. The thing you’ll notice straight away about the circuit is just how steep the gradients are. Soon after the start line, you’re heading steeply uphill into a blind left-hander, The Crest – which requires careful placement for Box Hill Corner, the right-hander that quickly follows. However, the trickiest bend here may be Cattai Curve, a fast downhill right-hander where it’s all too easy to either slide into the grass to the left or get penalised for track-cutting on the right. Amaroo’s aptly named final bend, Speedway Corner, also demands attention – cutting inside will not only get you a penalty but also risks a head-on collision with an unyielding tyre wall that can spell the end of your race!

Pick a car, any car

This is not really the place for fast cars that take a while to get into their stride; there just aren’t any straights long enough for them. What you need at Amaroo Park is fast acceleration and sharp cornering. You’d expect Minis to be a fun ride here, and so they are – but you’ll have to put in some work to win races in them, especially if you’re competing against faster machines. The hill after the start also means some of the slowest cars struggle even to keep pace at all. As seems so often to be the case, the Lotus Cortina is a solid all-rounder.

AI AI oh

Amaroo Park’s AI is on the slow side; I can usually challenge for class victory and fastest lap even on the Professional setting, which isn’t the case everywhere by any means. If you’re a more accomplished driver than me, you may need to take the wheel of a less competitive car for a real challenge. However, the computer-controlled cars do usually race pretty solidly around the circuit. The one big exception to this is that the AI drivers tend to brake very early for the Hairpin. If you stay calm you can go down the inside and pass quite easily. Don’t overdo it, though, as the corner has its name for a reason and damaging contact is all too easy.

Look at that!

I’ve never visited semi-rural New South Wales, but there’s a nice sense of place and time here; you can believe you’ve been transported back to late-Sixties Australia. I’ve no idea whether all the trackside billboards are appropriate for 1967, but all of them look right – and the exotic (to my English eyes) names like Peters Two-in-One (a double choc ice) and TB Bitter mix well with the usual selection of Dunlops and Coca-Colas. Look out for the line of VW Kombis (what Australians call the Campervan) parked by the Control Tower; there’s another on the inside of the last corner. You can also catch occasional glimpses of what looks like a small reservoir on the inside of the track, though it’s hard to see from cockpit view, at least unless you’re doing a wrong-way lap in open practice!

Download links

Amaroo Park is included in the Australian Track Pack collection:
Altbierbude
RaceDepartment

Credit card

Sunalp2 – GTL version
David Hingston (Hingo) – updates
Neil Faichney (Krunch) – some textures
Bud Lucas – rFactor version
Sergio Loro & Doc Roberto – GPL original

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