Well, I'm guessing here that you need to be able to measure Ricardo Tormo - Cheste circuit. As I have 20 minutes to spare, I give you here an universal measuring system for this track. I can build the same thing for Jerez, but not today (tomorrow I have to deliver some work) and besides, read on. We need more help here.
Unfortunately, I HAVE NO IDEA WHERE THE SECTORS END. This is where you enter the picture (or any other member who happens to know that). If you have any idea of where the borders between sectors are, you can measure easily the length of each one. If someone here knows, I'll be grateful, people.
Now, who's the best googler in this forum? Please, man, find for us this info, I'm sure hento and myself will appreciate it.
You can find the information on sector borders in F1.com but not for Cheste (nor Jerez, darn!) as it is not included in the racing calendar... so, I can do it for other circuits, but not for these two, unless someone helps.
Anyway, I built a simple kmz file for this circuit. It will help you (or you can get to know the track really well, as I explain in the end of this, as usual, long post).
You will need Google Earth. If you don't have it, first download it here:
http://www.google.com/earth/download/ge/agree.html
Once you have Google Earth installed (it should take 5 minutes), click on this:
https://sites.google.com/site/tracksear ... steLap.kml
It should open in Google Earth the drawing I made of this circuit (click on the "Open" button you should see after clicking on the previous link and Google Earth should open and the circuit should appear).
After Google Earth opens and the satellite image is downloaded (give it some time), you should see something like this:
If you see it, then, fine. If you don't, for some reason, then click again on the first link I gave, save it somewhere in your computer, open Google Earth and click on
File/Open and, finally, navigate to the directory where you saved the file named "Ricardo Tormo - Cheste Lap.kml".
Once you are seeing the track with the thin red line I made, as in the previous picture, right click on the name of the circuit that you'll see on the list of
Places that is located to the left of your screen. In the context menu that will appear, you have to chose the option
Show elevation profile, as shown in the next image (sorry, my version is in spanish):
Now, on the lower part of your Google Earth screen you'll see the vertical profile of the track (which, I think, is interesting in itself, but do not trust it too much, it's made of a world elevation profile with a precision that is not adequate for measuring vertical curves nor actual elevations: for example, it says that the max slope is 7% which is totally impossible, but I digress...).
You have to be looking at something like this:
Now, the fun part (at least for me). When you move your mouse over the elevation profile, a vertical line appears on top of it, with a red arrow. The red arrow also appears on top of the red line I have drawn on the circuit itself. Adjacent to this arrow you can see the length (measured from the start line), like this:
If someone comes forward with the info of where the sector borders are located, I ask him respectfully (if possible) to give us the same info for Jerez (just tell me where the sector's borders are, so I can include this information in the circuit file I have, pleeeze!). It would be very cool...
Caveat: regulations establish that the circuit has to be measured not as any regular road, but
through the racing line. Being a civil engineer, I did not follow that rule, I followed the "true axis", as I normally do. Besides, after I finished drawing the axis of the circuit, I ended with 3991 m in length, while the true (measured on the racing line) length is 4005 m. This tells me that I have an error of 14 m in 4 km, which is not bad (less than 0.4%, more than acceptable, which shows I have some practice doing this...). I also did NOT draw the circuit using curves (which I usually do) but I instead used 5 meter straight chords on curves, including transitions, but, hey, I have
real work to do and I knew this method would give me less than 1% error, so... this is all I can do.
Finally, if you still can not measure the sectors (sorry),
at least you can do something I think is really cool: you can take a virtual lap in this circuit. Click on the button named "
Play Tour" (I marked it on the previous picture, to the left of the image) that will appear in the lower right corner of the
Places list (once you click on the
Ricardo Tormo - Cheste Google Earth's place).
If you click on the
Tools/Option menu, and then on the
Touring tab you can change the
camera tilt angle, the
camera range (that is, elevation above ground) and the
speed for a more realistic lap.
I just used 75 degrees for the camera angle and 10 meters for the camera range and I felt like drifting around the track (because of the "inertia" of Google Earth's camera). Really nice.
You can learn the circuit by heart this way (even if you never have driven on it). I have the tracks for all circuits in F1 history, I only hope I find time to resurrect my web site... but, as I said, it's time for work!
The view from the starting line at the beginning of the lap. I can almost feel the engine rumbling on my back. At 150 km/hr constant speed (I think, or at 150 Google Speed units
) is a 1:09 lap. Not bad, but you lose the rear end several times...
