Talking to Phil over on the Ogre Minis kickstarter, it dawned on me that I didn't post pictures from my spring convention to the forums. Only 4 players so they goaded me into being a 5th, but that meant more turns (and with it, more action) per person. A couple crashes, a couple explosions, and a laugh at my expense when another player took me out posthumously...gauged the distance wrong, and wasn't able to get out of the way of a freewheeling 'dead' car.
https://imgur.com/a/2RUqu
That's how the arena turned out, at least in unpainted form...it got down to the wire enough that something had to give, and the paint gave. Still not 100% happy with it [I'll never be 100% happy with it], but it's good enough that I'm going to finalize this one, rather than re-cut again. A couple blocks could have tighter tolerances, and I want to re-do the catch fence (the L shape doesn't travel well).
Magesmiley: The little cut-ins in the center of the walls were a good call, thank you for the recommendation. They were responsible for some tough decisions when cars were on the outer ring...do they drift to avoid, follow the natural line back towards the middle, coming out of the middle which way do they go, etc.
The support easel needs a little work yet, but there was plenty of positive feedback comparing it to the photocopied Movement and Control charts passed out...year in and year out a sticking point for getting people to give the game a chance is how intimidating the tables and charts and things look at first blush, so a lot of my work goes into taking the edge off for first-timers. The fonts need to be bigger, but! That one little easel is both the Movement table (to 150mph) and the Control table (to 150mph), condensed by taking advantage of patterns.
Movement is a single pass through the "0-0-0-0-0 to 1-1-1-1/2-1" pattern, plus a bit off to the side to keep track of how many times a car as 'wrapped around' back to a multiple of 50...and with it gained a +1 to whatever's on the chart.
Control meanwhile is "At Handling Status [column heading], you need to meet or beat [row heading] if your speed is greater than [cell contents].