Apricot Hill Raceway is a high-speed race track with some lower-speed sections. Although circuits undergo slight changes every game, little of Apricot Hill has actually changed. It shape somewhat resembles a number 7 in reverse. The course features lots of elevation changes throughout, as well as blind corners.
In GT6, the track features trackside accommodations and lights installed to enable night racing, as well as the ability to change the weather.
Summary & Details[]
Apricot Hill Raceway is a rather unique course in that, despite the rather constant elevation changes and lower-speed nature of certain corners, is fairly easy to understand and apply techniques to. Nearly every corner is simple to drive through, and even the most novice driver can maneuver them if going at an appropriate speed. Braking is rarely heavy, and many turns can be taken at intermediate speeds, with most cars able to get around the course in under 2 minutes. Most license tests usually involve the first 7 turns, or the whole course, though the inward hairpin is used in Gran Turismo 6 to accommodate the driver's understanding of taking tight corners.
Looking around the course visually, there are many sandtraps and walls distanced from the corners of the course in case of high-speed accidents. The pit lane is internal and spans nearly the entire length of the main straight. Distance markers are not uncommon around the circuit, nor are advertisement signs, both of which light up during the night. There are shared areas for grandstands on the main straight, turn 7 in all layouts. Like a lot of the other tracks, the road is smooth, and banked around select corners, making for an ideally smooth, stable, high-speed drive around the course.
At night, the course is lit up for drivers to be able to see better in the darker conditions. Much of the course is at least somewhat lit by some form of lighting fixture, especially the grandstands on the main straight, where the lights are installed on the roof of the structure. The signs and distance markers are also alight as opposed to light-reflective like some courses incorporate. The corners are usually the most lit parts of the course besides the main straight.
Apricot Hill Raceway is most usually raced during the day in all layouts, but since the track's reemergence in GT6, it's been available to be raced at night, and also in the rain. In older iterations, the roads are nice and wide, with the curb just the same. From Gran Turismo 4 onward, the road was re-proportioned to more realistic dimensions, though still relatively wide. The curbs are now much smaller, and, since reappearing in GT6, have been blue and yellow over the traditional red and white, though this has soon been reverted. The course is largely the same in each depiction.
Layout & Sectors[]
Sector 1[]
Turn 1 rises up to turn 2, therefore making it a difficult section of the track. The line taken here can vary with equivalently sacrificial results. A wide exit out of 1 makes for a smoother turn 2 but braking can be unstable, whereas a narrow exit generates a tighter turn 2 but grants more stable braking opportunities.
Release your throttle just before the 50m marker board, where the white kerbstone starts, and turn in. Gently apply the brakes to reduce your speed for turn 2. Get back on throttle again and gradually build up as you pass though the corner apex. Aim to exit in a straight line.
Brake on approach to turn 3, then pass through using an out-in-out racing line. Turns 4 through 6 form an undulating section true to the nature of the track, with turn 5 being obscured by a hill. The exit out of turn 5 is wider than it appears, and thus can be taken at higher speeds. Pass through turn 4 flat out, and then briefly release the throttle as you rise up. Re-apply the throttle to exit turn 5, finishing just before the kerbstones of turn 6. Transition to the right side of the road in preparation for turn 7.
Sector 2[]
Turn 7 is a long, semi-banked bend that can be taken at high speed. Ease off the throttle and move to the inside kerbing, gradually regaining throttle input as you aim to maintain your speed and line. Steady steering and throttle control here are key to keeping your line and not going wide early. Once you see the pavilion ahead of you, increase to full throttle as you exit.
Following a long, downhill straight is turn 8. This corner appears tighter than it actually is, and is an easy place to make a mistake at. Brake just after the 100m marker board on the left, and aim for a late apex. Be careful not to overshoot your brake marker, or you will sacrifice a lot of time on exit. The inside kerbstones are also tall and can disrupt car balance if driven over.
Pass through turns 9 and 10 flat out.
Sector 3[]
Turn 11 is a blind left-hander that leads to the final chicane. Brake at the 50m marker board and turn in while maintaining a steady throttle. The whole turn is downhill, so be wary of understeer. You will be sitting on the inside of the corner for what feels like a long time, so be ready for when the turn 12 & 13 chicane appears in front of you.
This chicane turns right and then sharply to the left as the road rises again. Aim for a line that goes between the apexes of both corners and brake briefly as you hit the apex of turn 12. Gradually build up your throttle again as you exit turn 13, avoiding the kerbstone on the inside, as hitting it will destabilize the car and make it behave erratically on corner exit. Be sure to gain as much speed on exit as you can for the final straight.
Use a standard racing line to navigate the final turn 14 at full throttle.
Palm Strip[]
The "Plum Strip" wireframe, found from the game's press kit
During the opening FMV of GT2, the names of two tracks flash on the screen: Eiger Path (which became Grindelwald) and Palm Strip (misspelled as "Plam Strip".) For a long time, Palm Strip was often believed to be the hidden drag strip for the planned drag racing mode in that game (supported by the existence of the unused drag racing menu panel on the arcade mode disc, the HKS-tuned drag versions of the 180SX and GT-R, and the racing modification for the Dodge Intrepid ES). Such speculation also involved the investigation of the unidentified floating land mass outside of Laguna Seca, accessible by breaking out of the track, which turned out to be an early version of the same course, as well as misbelief that the progression bug in early versions of the game are related to the mode.
It was later revealed that Palm Strip is nothing more than an early-development name for Apricot Hill Raceway. In certain license tests in the European version of GT2, the description states the test is taken on Palm Strip, but it loads Apricot Hill when started. In addition, a press kit published by Sony Computer Entertainment Europe contains an image of a wireframe of the course under the name "Plum Strip", and the section where the aforementioned license tests take place is also internally named l_plam, which confirms this information.[1]
Appearance in games[]
Events marked with an asterisk (*) are raced in reverse.
In GT2, Apricot Hill is seen with more trees, and a city in the 3D background. In later games, these were removed in exchange for a mountainous surrounding with fewer trees.
In GT2's manufacturer races and Event Synthesizer, both of which feature randomized track selection, only the reverse version of Apricot Hill will appear. This is due to a typo in the track's name in the code that handles track randomization, which causes the game to fall back to the first track in the list instead, a stripped-down split-screen version of Autumn Ring.[2]
In the GT4 version of the track, if driven in reverse, in the second corner you can see smoke on the hill.
Through out the years, spectator areas have changed at Apricot Hill. In GT2, the grandstands encompassed the roadside of the start/finish straight, turns 1 and 2, turn 6 and midway through turn 7, as well as the entrance to turn 8. In GT3, the stands are mostly located in the same place, though spectator stands on the straight before turn 13 were added, and the grandstands over turns 6 and 7 are re-adjusted to cover more of turn 7. GT4 features much the same layout as that which is seen in its fathering game with only cosmetic changes to the stands. In its most recent iteration, the grandstands have a more simple look, and have been removed from turns 1, 2, and 8. The stand by turn 7 are now all the way around turn 7 only. As well, the stands on the start/finish are higher and further away in GT2 than the ones from GT3 onward.
The course's absence from GT5 could possibly be seen "in-universe" as track management closing the facility down to revamp accommodations, much in the same way that the High Speed Ring missed GT3 before reappearing in much larger form and with entirely different trackside amenities in GT4.
Despite the track being normally inaccessible in GT5, the Acura NSX Concept video features the track's final section, presumably using the hidden PlayStation 2 version of the track.
Apricot Hill's layout teased in the Behind The Scenes: Collectors trailer
Apricot Hill's layout teased in the Find Your Line trailer
In the same way as Deep Forest Raceway, Apricot Hill has been teased for Gran Turismo 7, in which multiple fluorescent lines can be seen drawing the layout for Apricot Hill in the Behind The Scenes trailers, most noticeably at the end behind the #findyourline text. Apricot Hill would go on to be shown at the end of almost every Behind The Scenes trailer, and would be teased again in the Find Your Line trailer with a slightly different design, being shown in white.
Unlike Deep Forest Raceway, however, this track has yet to make its return for GT7. In addition, while Grand Valley Speedway was released as an update under the name Grand Valley Highway 1, this track has not made it's return as of 2024, with no explanation regarding the track's ongoing absence.
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