2026-07-15 BACKTRACK

BACKTRACK: DRAW A LOOP, PRESS GO

Some things shipped while the diary wasn't looking. This series catches up. First offender: the Track Builder, sitting right there on the main menu.

It's exactly what it says. You draw a loop — freehand track brush, plus stamps for hairpins, sweeps, squeezes and crossovers — on a living map that already has coastline, rivers and forest on it. Pick a biome, let the scenery grow in on its own (or reroll it until the lake sits where you want), name the thing, save it.

The Track Builder: a two-lane loop drawn on a meadow coast map, terrain palette on the left, track brushes along the bottom, and a side menu with lanes, cars, scenery and save options ending in GO — RACE THIS. — Every good circuit starts as a rectangle with ambitions.

Then the button that matters: GO — RACE THIS. Your circuit runs through the same track rules as every campaign course, a real grid shows up, and the loop you doodled two minutes ago has a racing line, a strike zone and opinions about your brake stat.

Small print: builder tracks are a practice playground — no purse, no strikes, no grudges. The feud stays on the calendar.