Some tracks don’t die. They get paved over, swallowed by suburbs, or left to the weeds, but their ghosts keep turning laps. You’ll find them in broken YouTube onboard clips, in scanned laser files buried in sim archives, or just muttered about by older drivers who remember them more vividly than last week’s quali. These are the circuits that time forgot, but the legends? Those are still loud.
I’ve driven a few of these in sims. Some were beautiful and brutal. Some were just stupid. But each one mattered once. So here’s a tour of the tracks that faded from the real world, but still burn rubber in stories.
Brenets Ring: Switzerland's Banned Speed Haven
Brenets Ring, perched in the Swiss Jura Mountains, wasn’t supposed to exist long. Just a temporary circuit laid across public roads in the late 1940s, it was a madman’s answer to post-war boredom. But then, Switzerland banned circuit racing altogether in 1955. Just like that, it vanished.
Still, the Ring's memory survives in hillclimb folklore. That uphill blast through dense pine forest? It’s the stuff of sim legend now. I once tried a Group C car there in a mod someone rigged up for rFactor. Flat-out in third, dodging trees closer than any FIA inspector would allow. The whole thing felt illegal, and that’s probably why it still hits.
· No official layouts remain. Sim communities rebuilt it from scratch based on survivor maps and shaky film reels.
· If you’re hunting immersion, try it in VR. It’s terrifying.
Reims-Gueux: Straight-Line Hell With Champagne On Tap
This French circuit had no right to be that fast in the 1950s. Located in the heart of the Champagne region, Reims-Gueux was a slipstream battleground disguised as a wine tour. The straights were stupidly long, the corners abrupt and barely contained, and the whole thing felt like a roulette wheel spinning at 300 km/h.
It wasn’t just the layout that gave it flair. This was a circuit built on indulgence. Drivers wore silk scarves under their helmets. Spectators sipped bubbly trackside like it was a fashion event with engine noise. The culture around Reims was decadent, risky, and a little bit unhinged, closer in spirit to Monte Carlo than Monza. It’s no wonder motorsport romantics compare it to a lost casino town: big bets, high risk, and beauty everywhere you look.
When I sim it in Assetto Corsa, it still feels like a gamble. You barrel down the back straight, praying your draft works and your brakes don’t fade. The guy ahead of you might be lining up a pass or spinning out like a busted flush. A friend once said it’s the kind of place CasinoSeeker readers would appreciate, a circuit that behaves like a slot machine with champagne in its cupholders.
· Real Reims taught racers bravery. Virtual Reims teaches restraint. Same track, different ghosts.
· Go classic: Lotus 49 or a '67 Ferrari. Anything newer feels like cheating.
Keimola Motor Stadium: Finland’s Brief Burst Of Brilliance
This one cuts deep for me. Keimola was Finland’s great motorsport hope in the ‘60s. It had fast corners, elevation, and that brutal, banked final turn that asked drivers to leave logic at the apex. It was a track built for legends — and then left for junkies and graffiti.
Shut in the late '70s due to noise and neglect, Keimola should’ve been forgotten. But the graffiti-covered control tower still looms, and in the sim world, a few heroic modders gave it life again.
I ran a vintage touring car series there once. You don’t forget the way those cars dance across the uneven surface. Grip changes mid-corner. Trees flash by like spectators. Every lap feels like it shouldn’t be happening.
· Keimola has one of the most satisfying left-hand sweepers ever mapped.
· The ghosts here speak Finnish. They scream into apexes.
Crystal Palace: London’s Lost Gem
Yes, there was a race track in London. And yes, it was completely nuts. Crystal Palace was short, bumpy, tight, and surrounded by Armco with zero forgiveness. Formula 2, touring cars, you name it, they all took a shot at this city circuit between the '50s and early '70s.
It’s the kind of place where modern drivers would quit halfway through a lap just to write a risk assessment. In sims, you feel every dip. Every gear change sounds wrong. And if you miss your line by an inch, you're in a bush.
Still, the place has character. I ran a Caterham there once in RaceRoom. It felt like someone handed me a scalpel and told me to perform surgery while getting slapped.
· Real drivers called it “a kart track on acid.”
· Virtual drivers call it “utter chaos.” Which is to say, great.
Solitude: Germany’s Better Nürburgring (Yeah, I Said It)
Everyone loves the Nordschleife, but the real heads talk about Solitude. It was Stuttgart’s pre-war motorsport crown jewel, used right up until 1965. It had blind crests, terrifyingly narrow forest sections, and a rhythm that punished hesitation. Unlike the Ring, it wasn’t about brute memorization. It was about nerve.
When I tried it in a vintage Porsche sim pack, I couldn’t believe how much it flowed. Where the Nordschleife punishes mistakes with traps, Solitude invites you to dance, but if you miss the beat, it eats you whole.
· Jackie Stewart called it “pure driving,” which for him is basically poetry.
· You feel like a hero here, even if you’re 5 seconds off pace.
Riverside International Raceway: California’s Asphalt Mirage
Ask any American sim vet over 40 about Riverside, and they’ll get misty. This California track saw Can-Am monsters, stock cars, F1 tests, and even Steve McQueen doing donuts. But urban sprawl did what runoff couldn’t: it buried the track in subdivisions.
In iRacing, Riverside’s laser-scanned version feels like a dream sequence. The camber loads up just right in the esses, and the downhill braking zone into Turn 9 still makes you clench.
I once hotlapped it in a Mustang GT350 with someone narrating ghost stories from the ‘70s. Halfway through a lap, he just muttered, “Man, you can feel where the beer gardens used to be.” That’s the thing about Riverside, it was alive. Now it’s just asphalt remembered.
· Run it at dusk. You’ll get chills.
· Cars that slide make it sing. Don’t bring grip here, bring guts.
Charade Circuit: France’s Volcano Circuit That Bit Back
Built in an extinct volcano’s crater near Clermont-Ferrand, the old Charade was 8km of madness. Formula 1 ran there four times, and drivers hated how it chewed tires and tossed rocks like a medieval siege. There were 48 corners. Forty-eight. Someone counted. In sim racing, it’s hell to learn but addictive once it clicks. You’re climbing, diving, braking blind. You’re praying your memory holds. I ran a vintage open-wheeler league here. By lap 10, everyone had stopped caring about lap times. We just wanted to survive.
· Think of it as rally stage meets circuit.
· Nobody agrees where the apexes are. Not even the ghosts.
The Old Österreichring: Red BullBefore It Had Wings
Today’s Red Bull Ring is neat and sterile. But the original Österreichring? That was raw horsepower warfare. Wide curves, endless straights, elevation changes that threw your stomach into the windshield.
They chopped it up in the '90s. Safety, sure. But the soul changed.
The original version is still around in sim land. I tried it in a V10-era F1 car once. Bad idea. The sheer speed broke my internal organs. There’s a right-hander after the Bosch Kurve that feels like your last conscious decision.
· Sim versions keep the original’s scale. You need a map and a stiff drink.
· Run it in something old and unstable. Trust me.
Honorable Mention: Targa Florio, The Road Rally That Ate Circuits for Breakfast
Targa Florio isn’t a track. It’s an ordeal. A 72km open-road loop through the Sicilian mountains, it made Nürburgring look like a school parking lot. Narrow, bumpy, lined with stone walls and spectators standing way too close. It hosted everything from sports cars to prototypes until 1977, when someone finally realized it was completely insane.
In the sim world, though? It’s a rite of passage. If you’ve never spent an hour white-knuckling a classic Porsche through its mountain switchbacks, dodging invisible goats and trying not to vomit, you haven’t suffered enough. That’s what makes it legendary.
· Lap times exceed sanity. Crashes exceed memory capacity.
· Run it once in a 917K, then swear never to do it again. Then do it again anyway.
Bring Back These Circuits (At Least In Our Rigs)
Not all circuits get reborn. Some decay with dignity. Others disappear under condos and Costco parking lots. But what keeps them alive isn’t concrete. It’s obsession.
Sim racing gives us a chance to preserve these ghosts in motion. Every mod, every track scan, every broken texture patched by a guy named Klaus in a Discord server, they all matter.
They aren’t just for nostalgia. They’re for understanding what came before. Why certain corners scare us. Why others make us grin. And why some laps still echo, long after the engines stopped.