Special Stage Route 11

Special Stage Route 11 is a track that appeared in the original Gran Turismo game and Gran Turismo 3: A-Spec. Like Special Stage Route 5, it is an urban course raced at nighttime. The track is primarily meant for speed, as it has a few very wide turns and very long straights. Despite this, the track has some sharp turns that can become a problem. Interestingly enough though, the Gran Turismo 3 version of this track doesn't go through the tunnel as the one in Gran Turismo 1 does. Instead, it goes through a semi-straightaway which is dotted with lighted trees.

Similarities and Differences with other Special Stages

 * Special Stage Route 11, as aforesaid, is an urban-based track that is raced at night, like all Special Stages. As with Special Stage Route 5, Special Stage Route 11 is set on a highway, and partway through a city. It has many transitions between sharp, low-speed corners, and wide, high-speed corners. The two variations have 24 (GT1/'98, 4.894km) and 21 turns (GT3/'01, 4.561km) respectively.
 * Although it shares a brand name, setting, and time, SSR11 is longer, more technical, and more tricky than it's little sister SSR/CSR5. This is maily because the course was made to be more difficult than Grand Valley Speedway, one of the hardest circuits at the time. The track is also noticablely more decorated than other Special Stage Circuits, as it has various lighting patterns, billboards, and tunnels (The 3rd hairpin tunnel is the only one remaining since the Gran Turismo 3 rebuild of the circuit).
 * Compared to the new Special Stage Route 7, it is much shorter, but practicality is more or less, a tie. A major difference between the two is that Special Stage Route 7 is practically a circuit made out of a two-lane highway, which turns around at the enter/exit roads to the highway. Whereas Special Stage Route 11, much like Special Stage Route 5 , uses both highway, and major and minor city streets to make a complex circuit.


 * All in all, Route 11 is a tactical, fast-paced, and very technical course that was most likely created to out do the other circuits at the time. With the inclusion of real-world circuits after GT1, the track would eventually lose it's appeal in favor of the real-world racetracks. Many people who raced on the track though, will generally say it's one of the best tracks out of the Special Stages, and ultimately out of the franchise. The track's fan popularity has declaired it to be one of Gran Turismo's all time greats, dispite its disapparance from the series after Gran Turismo 3.

Omition Status

 * Many speculate that the track "died", or developers Polyphony Digital"Killed off" the track, as it has not been seen in recent intalments. There are no current plans for its return thus far. This has happened to many tracks throughout the series since Gran Turismo 2, such as Test Course, Smokey Moutain (North & South), Tahiti Circuit (Tahiti Dirt Route 3 In North America and other regions), Super Speedway, Rome Circuit(Pre-Gran Turismo 4), and more.

Sector 1
You zoom of the start/finish line, located half way through the northern most straight. Heading into turn 1, you turn gentally right. After exiting turn1, the torture stars, as you break hard into turn 2, a tight, right-hade turn about 90 degrees. you head down a short-length straight, encoutering turn 3, a tight chicane. heading down another short straight, turns 4 & 5 come therafter with turn 5 following up turn 4. you shoot down yet, another short straight, half way through which is the checkpoint which ends the sector.

Sector 2
Sector 2 has two different layouts, with both listed below. Since the one in Gran Turismo isn't divided into sectors, I used the Gran Turismo 3 sector layout as a template.

(GT1 Ver.)
After howling down the last half of the straight, you brake into the low-speed, turn 6, a right-hand, semi-wide hairpin turn, once again, heading down another short straight. Afterwards a sharp, short, left hand turn (turn 7) is followed. After another short straight, the hairpin turn leading into the tunnel, known as turn 8, is the last hairpin turn of the sector. Now you have some breathing room, heading down two short starights with a high-speed right-left-left-right chicane in the middle. after that only leaves the smoth, wide, turns 10 & 11. The following straight has the checkpoint for sector 2 half way through.

(GT3 Ver.)
The first part is the same as the GT1 version, but the similarities stop here. You are now heading down the straight after the first hairpin. It is here that instead of the sharp, left-hander leading into the tunnel hairpin, you have a another follow-up hairpin (turn 7 on the GT3 circuit) with a shorter radius than the preceeding hairpin. Afterwards, you will speed through two mid-lenght straights, with only a right-left chicane coming between them. Take some time here to admire the graet scenery, with the lighted trees, the ferris wheel in the background, and the other city buildings surounding you. The checkpoint is still in the same spot as before.

Sector 3
After the last half, or that last part of the straight in the GT3 version, you slow down for turn 12, or turn 9 in the GT3 version, with turn 13/10 following up directly after. after a microscopicly short straight comes turn 14/11. A short straight, and turn 15/12 lead into a mid-length straight, with turn 16/13 leading into a right, hairpin tunnel section, which is turn 17/14. Turning gentally right into turn 18/15, then to turns 19/16 & 20/17, two left hand corners. After a short straight, a right-hand hairpin turn, turn 21/18 comes with the first half of the second-to-last straight, half way through which is the checkpoint that ends the sector.

Final Sector
This sector is the rest of the circuit. which starts with the last half of the chicane straight, going into the chicane. After the chicane comes the last two corners of the circuit, two right-hand, parabalic-style corners that blend in so it only looks like one corner. the restof the section is just the first half of the start/finish straight.



Trivia

 * Special Stage Route 11 is one of the most noticably changed original circuits in the entire GT series of games. this is reflected through its re-introduction in GT3 as the double chicane section at under level of the finish line after the first hairpin is removed and redone.
 * Special Stage Route 11 is arguablely the most famous Special Stage track in the GT franchise, although, later players seem in favor of Special Stage Route 7.
 * It is the 2nd longest original city course in the GT series, falling only to Special Stage Route 7.
 * A video on youtube, and many pictures on the internet theorizes that Special Stage Routes 5 and 11 are connected to each other (usually at the final hairpins).
 * Much like Special Stage Routes 5, and 7, Special Stage Route 11 is rumored to be based on a location in Japan, where the highways and streets are famous for street racing.
 * An inferance to the removal of Special Stage Route 11 is that the developers wanted to conserve the memory space in later instalments to incorperate higher graphical output, perserve framerate, inhance driving mechanics, include more real-world circuits, and more cars. Since it is long and very scenic, the track itself probably took up a lot of space in the games engine memory. (Note: This is spurious, considering that the Nurburgring is a much longer and larger track.)
 * The Licence Tests in both GT1, and GT3 have a test held on this track, both of which have the TVR Griffith 500 as the test car.