DONNYBROOKE INTERNATIONAL SPEEDWAY for GPL
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February, 2005

1- A Brief History
2- Sources and Credits
3- Comments and Contact Info
4- Installation

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Donnybrooke International Speedway(now known as Brainerd International Raceway) is a three-mile/4.85 kilometer road course located approximately 5.5 miles/8.9 kilometers north and west of the central Minnesota city of Brainerd, the home of Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox.

The track was named for two well known local racers, Donny Skogmo and Brooke Kinnard. It features 10 turns, 7-right and 3-left) For the most part the track is very flat. It's main straight is a drag strip burnout area/dragstrip/shutdown area and accordingly very wide, leading into a very fast righthander, sometimes touted as 'the fastest corner in North America'. Whether or not this is true is open for debate, but it is fast and precarious if you get too wide.

Since the track was built(most sources say 1963, some 1968) it has changed very little in it's basic layout, except for the addition of a squared-off segment in turn 9, to slow motorcycles down a little. Despite it's northern clime, it rarely has had problems with frost heaves. Generally it has been very smooth, with drivers from different eras reporting specific spots on the track that presented challenges at different times, which usually disappeared with resurfacing. As the track was resurfaced several times, the actual drivable part of the track would sometimes change slightly, leaving some hazardous rough areas at the apexes in many of the corners. Dropping a tire off would bring a lot of dirt onto the track surface and unsettle a car, often bottoming out or damaging suspensions, and very often causing an accident.

By the early 1970's, 'gator-strips' and guardrails/armcos began to appear. The gator-strips are similar to rumble-strips, but larger and a bit more brutal, especially on a motorcycle. They were successful in keeping competitors from dropping a tire off into the grass, but a lot of drivers complain that they can be rough on a vehicle. Guardrails/armcos were added in places for safety's sake, especially in the corner exit area following turn 9 leading to the bridge, after a few drivers managed to hit the banking there. 

In 1972 Donnybrooke hit financial hard times and was put up for sale. 1973 saw a new owner and a name change to Brainerd International Raceway. It would change hands a few more times in following years.

The 1980's saw a new control tower and grandstands built, among other improvements.

The 1990's saw more improvements, most notably a complete rebuild of the first 700 feet of the drag strip. According to BIR, the track surface is as close to level as possible, with a largest deviation from level being less than .5 millimeter.

Over the years Donnybrooke/Brainerd has hosted a wide range of events representing many forms of motorsport. F5000, Can-Am, Trans-Am, USAC open-wheelers(now called OWRS ChampCars), AMA Superbikes, snowmobiles, NHRA dragracing, national and regional sportscar clubs, and more, have all appeared at one time or another. Sadly, the track appears to be in financial trouble as of early 2005. It is currently up for sale and has cancelled most events planned there, save for the NHRA Brainerd Nationals, and fired the entire staff. The track area also serves as a resort, and there are rumblings that racing may cease altogether.
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We were fortunate to have a large number of sources for information about Donnybrooke, but sometimes you can have too much information. This is especially true when sources do not agree with one another. For instance, there are numerous web sources that list Donnybrooke's length as anywhere between 2.89 miles and 3.2 miles, and even more sources that refer to Donnybrooke's main straight as being a mile long, when in fact it is well short of that.

We were able to communicate with dozens of people through various means, and received numerous forms of information(photos and memories foremost) about Donnybrooke. Many are or were drivers, or family members of drivers who have raced there over the years. Many were simply fans who attended races. All were very helpful. Perhaps the most helpful of all was John Eklund. John's uncle was a construction engineer that helped build Donnybrooke. John was able to send us numerous documents, photos, and drawings with information detailing aspects of the track in it's earliest form. These were the primary sources we used as reference to build Donnybrooke for GPL.

The staff at The Colonel's Brainerd International Raceway, and various members of the Nord Stern Porsche Club of America, North Star Region-BMW Car Club of America, Land o' Lakes Region-Sports Car Club of America, were very helpful and answered a lot of dumb questions for us.

For the most part, our version of the track is based on the earliest years of the track, sans guardrails and 'gatorstrips', and with the original turn 9, original control tower, and grandstands. I recall a photo from the late 1960's taken by the great motorsports author/photographer Pete Lyons at Laguna Seca when it still had trees on the edge of the track and no guardrails, the caption read something like,"see how pretty roadcourses were before guardrails?" I am not saying this version of Donnybrooke is pretty, but it doesn't have guardrails :).
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Credits, Acknowledgements, and Thanks:
-Phil Flack- countless track creating tools
-Klaus Hörbrand- Winmip
-Stefan Magnusson & Lee Bowden- GPL++ The Addons and GPL Image Viewer
-Dave Noonan- 3doEd
-Jonas Matton & Martin Granberg- GPLRA
-Francois Dubuc- LPEditor
-Martin Granberg- Track Installer
-Joachim Blum- TRKCamEdit
-Paul Jackson- Speedgeezers
-Misu- Hungarian Simworld
-Pete Lyons, Dave Friedman, The Colonel's Brainerd International Raceway staff, Nord Stern Porsche Club of America members, North Star Region-BMW Car Club of America members, Land o' Lakes Region-Sports Car Club of America members, John Eklund, The Bruce McLaren Trust, Miguel DuHamel, and numerous others- Reference and Historical Information
-DW- 3do creation and some textures
-DW, KW, Pete L., DBH, Chuck Hobart, Miguel DuHamel- miscellaneous and sundry assistance 
-A couple of nice people from VROC who sent me some textures and images a few years ago. I cannot remember your names and I lost a lot of things in a hard drive crash(I know, I know)so I cannot refresh my memory, anyway, thanks.
-Numerous other people who i am sure I have neglected to thank.
-Thomas Clark- For pointing out a stupid mistake I made that caused the first release of Donnybrooke to be much bigger than it should have been. Sorry fellow dial-up users.

Known Bugs:
-None, but I am a rank amateur at this so let me know if it doesn't work for you.

-Most of the textures are 16bit, and some are larger than 256x256, so if this is a problem for you(voodoo users or whatever) I will put together something that will hopefully work for you.
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Comments:
I started this project back in 2001. Real life has butted in a couple of times and halted things, but over the last several months I have been able to spend more time on it. The track is not perfect, but that is due to my meager skills and not the good people who have helped me along the way. I have not been very involved in the sim-racing realm for the last couple of years and as such am not as knowledgable as I should be as to what type of equipment is being used to play GPL these days. If any of you have problems with the track, please let me know about it and I will see if I can fix things. 

Lee Gaunt (Lee_G) acme_mods@yahoo.com
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INSTALLATION

If you get a "Could Not Load Track" error following installation, go to the "donnybrk" folder in your GPL "tracks" folder and rename the file "dat" to "donnybrk.dat" and the track should load.

If the installation still fails, try the following;

create folder in sierra\gpl\tracks called "donnybrk", without the quotation marks,
and unzip all files in the archive to sierra\gpl\tracks\donnybrk folder.

rename the "dat" file to "donnybrk.dat", again without the quotation marks.

Go to your sierra\seasons\67season.ini(or 65season.ini for the '65 mod) and add the following:

[EventXX]
name=North Star Grand Prix
shortname=Donnybrooke
trackDirectory=donnybrk
month=4
day=4
numberOfLaps=80
startingGrid=4

If you wish, you can also add this same entry to your gp.ini file.

Be sure and change the "XX" in the "[EventXX]" to one number higher than the entry preceding it in the .ini file(ie, if the entry in the .ini just above this newest addition is "[Event35]", the your new addition will be "[Event36]")

Also, make sure to increase the number in the "numEvents=" entry at the top of the .ini file by one.

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This program is freeware. You may use it in any manner you choose and distribute it as you wish provided there is no money charged. This program may not be distributed on or within any media (such as a DVD/CD-Rom or a diskette) for which money is charged or within media distributed along with another item/s for which money is charged(for instance a periodical) without the author's explicit permission.

This "readme.txt" file must be included in all redistributions.

DISCLAIMER
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This software is provided "as is" without warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied. Use it at your own risk.

THIS IS NOT A SIERRA/PAPYRUS PRODUCT

