Ian Cooper, known as Cynon in the NR2003 world, is a very skilled 3DO artist and track designer. Individuals like Cynon are proof of just how versatile and expansive the NR2003 simulator can be. While Cynon does have some tracks that look and drive how you’d expect a NASCAR structured game would contain, many of the tracks anything but that. There are tracks in space, in Mario World, to even the pits of Hell!

If you’re looking for something the same, different, or VERY different, look no further than Cynon’s track collection below.

You will also be able to find Cynon at his own homepage, as he has taken over the hosting duties for the NR2K3 Tracks page, which can be found here.

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Abbotsford Speedway (v1.0.0)
Released: May 01, 2017
Cynon Comments: This is a 0.555 mile oval that I found on my hard drive under the name Shade Tree Speedway. It apparently went under the name AMRL Raceway prior, but I seriously doubt it was used for either league it was intended for since the pace car didn’t work and there was no AI at all. No idea who originally made it or how I even got the track. Renamed the track after a town near Wausau, Wisconsin. It has 10-12 degrees of banking around the whole track and it presently holds 46 cars comfortably.

Arena: Magnolia Speedrome
Released: February 27, 2018
Cynon Comments: The third of three tracks that I created as part of an experiment to see how I could make three tracks that are very different from each other despite having nearly identical geometry. This track supports a full field of 47 cars. The pit stalls are staggered, with pit stall 0 followed by pit stall 23, then pit stall 1, stall 24, stall 2, stall 25, going all the way back to stalls 20, 43, 21, 44, 22, 45, and stall 46 at the back.

Magnolia Speedrome is set in Jackson, Mississippi. The track surface is relatively smooth and there is a strong low line. Unlike the other two arena tracks, which feature a lot of local sponsors, I leaned more towards track sponsors that had a presence in NASCAR already. Cloudy weather isn’t as dark as it is on most NR tracks.

Special thanks to Project Short Track for the flag objects, John Norton for the WKC logo, and Brian Spinney for the Northeast Grand logo.

Arena: Steelback Stadium (v1.0.2)
Released: February 27, 2018
Cynon Comments: The first of three tracks that I created as part of an experiment to see how I could make three tracks that are very different from each other despite having nearly identical geometry. This track is the baseline for the other two. This track supports a full field of 47 cars. The pit stalls are staggered, with pit stall 0 followed by pit stall 23, then pit stall 1, stall 24, stall 2, stall 25, going all the way back to stalls 20, 43, 21, 44, 22, 45, and stall 46 at the back.

Steelback Stadium is set in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, which is just outside Pittsburgh. There is an equal amount of grip on the inside and on the outside. Some of the track sponsors are companies that are local to the area. Cloudy weather isn’t as dark as it is on most NR tracks.

Special thanks to Project Short Track for the flag objects, John Norton for the WKC logo, and Brian Spinney for the Northeast Grand logo.

Arena: Treasure Valley Arena (Boise)
Released: February 27, 2018
Cynon Comments: The second of three tracks that I created as part of an experiment to see how I could make three tracks that are very different from each other despite having nearly identical geometry. This track supports a full field of 47 cars. The pit stalls are staggered, with pit stall 0 followed by pit stall 23, then pit stall 1, stall 24, stall 2, stall 25, going all the way back to stalls 20, 43, 21, 44, 22, 45, and stall 46 at the back.

Treasure Valley Arena is set in Boise, Idaho. The track surface is bumpy, and there is not much of a low line at all. Some of the track sponsors are companies that are local to the area. Cloudy weather isn’t as dark as it is on most NR tracks.

Special thanks to Project Short Track for the flag objects, John Norton for the WKC logo, and Brian Spinney for the Northeast Grand logo.

Autodromo Nestor Nunes Oval
Released: February 20, 2017
Cynon Comments: So, on a whim, I made a new track for the TM Master Cup race in Argentina, based off the default Bristol. It’s called the Autodromo Nestor Nunes, set in a random town near Buenos Aires, Argentina. Changed the paint to blue to be similar to the Argentinian flag. The AI is a bit sketchy for CTS and PTA at the moment, it was made for GNS. Some of the pit stalls in the middle of 3 and 4 are a little close together but I haven’t seen any serious issues with them yet. This was tested online with PTA physics. Special thanks to all of the Formula 5 competitors who helped test this track, both the skilled drivers who tried to make every line work, and those drivers of … less skill that helped test when the flagman does and doesn’t throw yellows (seriously).
Known Issues:
AI is a bit -too- passive in the pitlane.
CTS and PTA AI sections in the track.ini are unfinished.

Big Blue: Nemo
Released: November 24, 2018
Special Notes regarding usage:
Unzip this file to your NR root directory — there are custom sounds that come with this track.
Cynon Comments: So I took a suggestion for a track and decided to make this track for NR2003. It’s based off the first Big Blue track in F-Zero for the Super Nintendo, but going backwards and with several corners cut out. It’s 2.695 miles long, making it the longest road course I’ve made since Gravis City: Industrial Zone 7. If you have a violent enough accident, you will tumble over the wall and into the ocean.

The decorations here would not have been possible without work done by Jefe on 3d Warehouse, Nobiax, Nintendo (Starfox 64) and Armory Digital.

Full pace lap is a standing start. The circuit supports 47 cars (46 AI and one human) comfortably.

Bikernieki Short Course
Released: February 17, 2015
Cynon Comments: Bikernieki Short Course. I cut the part of Bikernieki that was apparently only used for rallycross out. This is based off of a seemingly abandoned alpha that was made by Ervins Reinverts. It’s not very accurate to the real track, the trees are MUCH closer to the track and I think the actual track itself is narrower. The paddock also is different from the real track… but the layout is pretty close.

I felt this track deserved to get finished… so NR finally has a working track in Latvia. Woo.

Checking full pace lap will be a standing start, unchecking it will be a rolling start.

The spectator camera is essentially another TV camera, which is kinda similar to what I did with my E4 and RoadOne cameras.

The AI is pretty aggressive. The fast setup was made with them in mind…

Burlington Raceway v1.1
Released: July 20, 2017
Special Notes: Full Pace Lap is a standing start.
Cynon Comments: Burlington Raceway is a 1.43 mile road course. The layout was based off of the runways and other roads around the airport in Burlington, Vermont, but I made some changes to make it a good race track.

It has 9 turns, goes counterclockwise, and, as is typical for my tracks, the AI is very, very aggressive. It also holds a full field of 47 (player + 46 AI) without a problem. Despite the fact that I made it for GNS, I think this might be best with CTS, actually. Consider it an apology track for why Duluth sucked, then.

Parts of this track MAY find FPS to be a delicious snack. You have been warned, but in testing I’ve seen them as brief spikes in both hairpins (and sort of in turn 9 as well…), not as big FPS hits the entire way around the track.

Cape Cod International Raceway 2018
Released: July 10, 2018
Cynon Comments: A long time ago, Brian Wallace created Cape Cod International Raceway, a technical 2.74 road course located in Massachusetts. The problem is that this track, while gorgeous, had some awkward elevation changes (particularly for human drivers), awkward curbs, a pitlane that didn’t work well, a few textures that were dated or missing (like the ends of a few walls), and AI that left a lot to be desired. Over the last month or so I took a swing at cleaning this track up and making it much more suitable to online and offline racing.

As the F5 race a few weeks ago demonstrated, it’s definitely worthy of online racing. The AI is a bit over-aggressive, but road course AI do admittedly take a lot longer to fine-tune than they do for an oval, especially with a slower track like this one. Most of the AI testing I did was with GNS physics, and I don’t doubt I’ll make more improvements to them over time. There are a few extra PTA setups included by three people that competed in the F5 event here, my race setup, Syzgzy’s setup, and Wilhoit’s setup.

I made use of paint grip for some of the runoff areas, and concrete grip for the inside line for some corners.

Champion’s Arena
Released: January 01, 2019
Cynon Comments: This is a half mile coliseum oval partially inspired by Jonny, and partially inspired by Legion Saga II, an RPG Maker 2000 game I recently did a hopefully-entertaining-but-probably-cringy Let’s Play of on Youtube. Speaking of RPG Maker 2k, this is kind of a tribute from me to that community circa-2003.

This track has zero banking, probably multiple lines, kinda wonky AI, particularly when pitting. The flags in the median can be changed individually, and I included two sets of alternate flags to showcase it. One set has a bunch of numbers and icons of racing champions that most of you here should know and love, and CharlieBot’s #00. The other set is a series of portraits done for the RPG Maker community by Japanese artist Roco.

Duluth (v0.9.1)
Released: December 02, 2014
Special Notes: TERRIBLE AI. Also only do races with a full pace lap. The .INI is questionable.
Cynon Comments: This is a fictional road course that is less than 1.5 miles long yet comfortably holds a full field of 43 with a bit of breathing space in the pits. The layout is based off the Las Vegas infield road course.

General Grant Speedway (v1.1.0)
Released: May 07, 2018
Cynon Comments: This is an edit of an edit of an N3 conversion of Lee Speedway done by Phantom back in 2009. The AI doesn’t play nice, and they defend their positions very aggressively. If you love old school short track style racing, only with more aggressive AI, this track is for you. It holds a full field of 47 cars.

You might know this track as General Lee Speedway 2009 originally. I decided to give it a little bit of a facelift while not updating the racing line at all, because, frankly, that was REALLY well done. I decided to go peak ‘MERICA with this track’s reskin, and I decided that the track shouldn’t be named after a traitor and should be named after a patriot, instead.

So the sim racing world can be graced with this, a tribute to the general who freed the slaves back in 1865 along with Abe Lincoln and the boys in blue.

Göteborgs Motorbana
Released: July 01, 2021
Cynon Notes: A long time ago, Jka made a track called E4, which, despite its faults, I enjoyed, and created cameras for. There was a pointless chicane that annoyed me, and I wanted to see what the track would look like without the chicane, and with a long straight and fast left hand corner bypassing them. One thing led to another and it led to an almost total facelift to the track, which ended up with some Definitely Not Borrowed From Codemasters Games textures and bumpmaps for the asphalt, sand pits, and concrete. To make those work, a file in your shared folder will need to be modified. I have included it. Reshade seems to work with it quite well.

Some of the wonkier elevation on E4 was smoothed out, some of the curbs were raised, and a lot of trees were added. The tree models are based off one from Deus Ex, some textures from the Codemasters F1 games, a few logos from Euro Truck Simulator, various LEGO themes, Xenoblade Chronicles X (Axiom) and Minecraft. There’s also a cameo banner on the track somewhere.

Full pace lap is a standing start, the track supports a full field of 47 (1 human and 46 AI).

Gravis City: Industrial Zone 11 (v1.1.2)
Released: June 15, 2017
Cynon Comments: The second Gravis City track to be released, Zone 11 is a temporary roval that is almost exactly 1 mile long (1.007). It’s a true roval, all four corners are distinct. The west end of the track resembles Indianapolis (it’s rectangular), and the east end is more of a trapezoid shape like the old Emerson Fittipaldi Speedway in Rio de Janerio, Brazil. Like the other oval I’ve made, this track also has zero banking.

Gravis City: Industrial Zone 7 (1.5.0)
Released: September 20, 2016
Special Notes regarding usage: Unzip this file to your NR root directory — there are custom sounds that come with this track.
Cynon Comments: This track started life over two and a half years ago (late 2013) as an edit of Edenvale. I since redrew the track from scratch at least twice, finally settling on this version as it was the most fun to drive on. It’s set in a Midgar-like city that is a re-imagining of a location I created for an RPG Maker game I was invested in about 7 years ago, so that should explain the somewhat bleak and depressing imagery on the track. The track runs through part of Industrial Zone 7 in Gravis City, comes out of Zone 7 onto the city streets, and then back into Zone 7 at the end of Carver Street.

Hartford Stadium
Released: December 31, 2018
Cynon Comments: This is an edit of the Maxwell Center with less banking, so I think it’s best I copy over the description from that track. The coloring on this edit is green and blue, for the sadly gone Hartford Whalers NHL team.

Ice Planet 2002
Released: December 24, 2017
Cynon Comments: This is a 1.18 mile roval based on the Lego theme from the 1990s. It has 5 (or 6, depending on how you count) turns and has very little banking. However, it has plenty of elevation changes, with the highest point being 15 or so meters higher than the lowest point.

There is also plenty of eye candy, but beware, there is a possibility this track might eat frames really fast. If you have fog enabled, this track provides a treat for you during cloudy weather. The buildings came from Final Fantasy 10, but I recolored them, and I found the mountains on 3D Warehouse.

Inferno Pool Circuit
Released: October 12, 2017
Cynon Comments: The Inferno Pool is a 1.6 mile road course set around a nice big lake of lava. It supports a full field of 47 cars and includes standing starts for a full pace lap. Many of the lights on the track are colored, either orange, yellow, or a pale blue. Some assets by Nobiax, Squaresoft (Final Fantasy 10) and Triumph Studios (Age of Wonders).

The track has 8 turns with a decent amount of elevation changes, including an off-camber right hander in turn 3. Although this track looks like it was made just as a novelty track, it actually is meant for serious racing, as the AI will put on a show, and the simplicity of the course makes it actually very easy to learn to drive.

Interdimensional Rift
Released: November 07, 2017
Cynon Comments: This is a track that was made in the span of three days that shows off one of the most unused features in NR2003 — colored lights. I’ve used colored lights on other tracks I’ve made (Inferno Pool, the Gravis City tracks) but I decided I would showcase a full spectrum of lights here.

If you have fog enabled, this track has a treat for you in cloudy weather and a really unique Pit Lane 2 camera. Aside from that, this drives like an old-school short track that has similarities with New Hampshire, Martinsville, and Hickory. In addition, it holds a field of 47 cars without a problem. This track will always appear first in your track list, with the short name being “???”.

If you want to edit this track to look more like a real track… be my guest.

Los Angeles: Maxwell Center 1
Los Angeles: Maxwell Center 2
Released: April 19, 2018
Special Note: Maxwell Center 2 was used for the 2019 TM Master Cup Round of Los Angeles, but both are perfectly usable.
Cynon Comments: I looked at the Manhattan Raceway Stadium track, ‘borrowed’ the principal object from it (the arena itself — credit to RCC or whoever made the arena object) and made my own track inside of it. I felt Manhattan was too narrow and wanted it to accommodate a full field. The straights are wider than the corners, and have less banking. It holds a full field of 47 cars and is just under half a mile in length. The AI -may- cause accidents when entering and exiting the pits, but that hasn’t been tested that thoroughly.

I decided to set this track in Los Angeles, and opted to use a really distinctive shade of purple because, well, the Los Angeles Lakers are in purple and the Los Angeles Kings used to be in purple as well. Gives the track some sense of identity, as well.

Cup fast setup made by Nextelracer.
GNS and CTS fast setups made by Ongais25.

Note: The asphalt texture is a lot lower contrast than seen in the video.

Middle Georgia Motor Speedway
Released: December 20, 2017
Cynon Comments: This track is based on Middle Georgia Motor Speedway, a real short track in Georgia that stopped operating for oval racing in 1986. NASCAR ran nine Grand National races here between 1966 and 1971, and some scenes from Greased Lightning were filmed here. Jimi Hendrix also performed a concert here, but I’m getting off topic…

This version of the track assumes that the track never closed and would still host big-time racing even today. In case anyone’s going to complain about inaccuracies to the real track… most of them were intentional and done for style purposes, and since the track really hasn’t been operating since 1984, I feel it’s understandable. I went overboard with a “Peach State” motif for the track to give it some identity with the peach-colored paint and walls… and it looked way better than I thought it would. Anyone interested in making a more accurate, or a 1960s version of this track is welcome to do so without asking.

The track is banked about 5 degrees in the straights, and 17.70 degrees in the corners. I used onboard footage from a Dodge advert done at this track a few years ago to determine that. Most of the billboards, the track logo (which is pretty accurate), and all but one of the cars in the infield were provided to me by Eric McConnell, the Freeze Peach logo was done by Ceej.

The track holds a full field of 47.

Minnesota Motorsports Park
Released: December 23, 2021
Cynon Comments: This track is an edit of MNTRacing’s Edgewater Raceway, which in turn was an edit of Bullring Park — I think. It’s a very fast 1.047 mile oval that holds a full field of 47. There are some known issues with the AI under caution, and I spent way too long trying to mitigate them as best I could, with mixed results.

Some objects and textures are sourced from Deus Ex, iClone, BeamNG, Saints Row 2, and rFactor. If there are any other sources I am forgetting, let me know and I will amend this.

Special thanks to Anunnery for their fantastic work on one of the billboards.

Moncton Speedway (v1.2.0)
Released: November 24, 2017
Cynon Comments: I was going through the many, MANY tracks I’ve downloaded for this game and stumbled upon a very… uh, unfortunately named track (the name was a racial slur spelled backwards) with broken AI and almost no objects. The track otherwise looked like it had promise because it was fun to drive. Because of the track’s original name, I feel even less shame than usual in editing it.

So I stepped in, enlarged the track from 0.32miles to 0.434 miles and relocated it to Moncton, New Brunswick. I know there’s already a real short track in that area (Petty) but I haven’t seen it made.

Moncton Speedway is 14.5 meters wide and has ~16 degrees of banking in the corners that looks really awkward yet somehow isn’t when you drive it.

Track holds 42 AI + 1 human driver. There may be some more issues under cautions but an attempt was made to rectify them.

The Northeast Grand logo was provided by Brian Spinney. Some of the billboards were based on real ads or use real ads, I don’t know how old some of them are.

The grandstands, light posts, one of the buildings, and the power lines were borrowed from Flat Rock impulsively due to my extreme annoyance with the original track’s name. As is the norm for me lately, this track has its own unique asphalt texture.

Ocean State Speedway
Released: May 21, 2018
Cynon Comments: This is an edit of a fictional short oval track called Quahog Raceway, located in Coventry, Rhode Island. It’s a quad oval with 5 degrees of banking. The original track didn’t hold a full field of 43, let alone 47… this edit holds 47.

Not a lot to say about this one. Not sure who the original author was.

Flag object from Project Short Track, Northeast Grand logos by Brian Spinney.

Óvalo Juárez
Released: March 27, 2018
Cynon Comments: Several years ago, while looking for tracks to use in Formula 5, I stumbled across this track called Banquet Beta2. It looked mostly finished and mostly functional, but the AI were awkward, and the pit lane was a bit questionable. The layout is similar to Phoenix, but if the dogleg was indistinguishable from turn 3. It was pretty solid in its own right, but not completed.

Banquet Beta2 was done by prdesigns.

There’s also a lack of fictional Mexican tracks for NR2003, so I relocated the track to Juárez, Mexico (which in the process, I learned shares a metro area with El Paso, Texas… yay). I took it on myself to make the textures a bit better on Banquet Beta2 and improve the AI, and I think I succeeded. The track had also been in beta2 status for 12 years… I kept a lot of the existing track side objects, but not all of them, and added a few billboards. I also spent quite a bit of time on the AI, making them really racy and super aggressive. I maintain that about 66% of the work was already done.

This track uses a flag object made by Project Short Track and some models and textures from Deus Ex.

Provo Motorsports Park
Released: October 31, 2017
Cynon Comments: Provo Motorsports Park is a fictional 1.8 mile road course set around Provo, Utah. It supports a full field of 47 cars and includes standing starts for a full pace lap. The track has some very noticeable elevation changes, with turns 3 and 4 being reminiscent of the infamous Corkscrew at Laguna Seca. Turn 1 is nobody’s friend since it’s an uphill corner, but turn 2 is actually a solid passing zone, as is the turn 5-6-7 complex. If you’re close enough to someone you can probably pass them in turn 9 but I wouldn’t count on it. Those of you who have driven my tracks and constantly crap yourselves every time you exit the pit lane need not worry — this may be one of the first times I’ve made a road course where the pit exit is actually very safe!

I drew the layout several months ago and made the AI functional, but neglected to decorate it (this is nothing new for me), thinking that what I wanted to do would take too long. I did about 85% of the decorating on this track in one day, thanks to re-using some of the objects on Inferno Pool. I wanted to add more detail in places, but I didn’t want to go overboard and delay this track (and subsequently, others I want to do) any further. I would expect a 1.1 version of this track in the not too distant future, because the AI .lps are serviceable but not my finest, and I would also expect an OWR version of this track that is more than just ini changes (tire walls would absorb cars instead of making them bounce off, regular walls kill the car) in the future. Stay tuned…

This may be the first track that uses a 4096×4096 texture (it’s for a hill trackside), but I would be surprised if that was the case. The main sponsor on the track, myLIFTER, is a real company based in Provo.

Some assets by Nobiax and Squaresoft (Final Fantasy 10).

Rainbow Road v1.1.0
Released: June 03, 2019
Cynon Comments: Just in time for pride month, here’s my take on Rainbow Road for NR2003. You can knock the AI out into space.

Sources for some textures include the Mario Kart games, and Solar System Scope.

This track was not based off of any of the Mario Kart layouts, but it’s mostly inspired by Mario Kart 64. It’s (probably) the first use of a custom skyball (instead of a hemisphere or cylinder as other tracks have done… and there’s honestly no reason for any other track but this one to use one) and it has some truly massive objects in physical size (but not polygon count!) to actually make it look like it’s in space.

Tula Circuit v1.00
Released: February 24, 2016
Cynon Comments: Open beta for the Tula Circuit. A Russian track that was never built but planned in … well, Tula Oblast. Those of you who race in Formula 5 regularly will probably have raced on this track. Some slight changes were made, mostly to the scenery and to the AI.

Full pace lap will be a standing start. Track was tested with .CTS and .PTA ai, and they are very aggressive, especially in the first braking zone in turn 2…

Spotter reports based on sectors — turn 1 is sector 1, turn 2 is sector 2, and turn 3 is sector 3.

Zanarkand Promenade
Released: March 22, 2022
Cynon Comments: A track based on Dream Zanarkand in Final Fantasy 10. Most of the objects and textures on the track are directly from Final Fantasy 10, with modifications made to compensate for NR2003’s limitations (particularly in regards to environment lighting).

I don’t know the original author of the garage object, but I did modify it, I think it was made by someone at Hillcrest Racing.

I’m pretty sure the flaggers were made by Project Short Track, but I could be mistaken on that. I had issues with the default flaggers when making this track, issues that did not exist when I brought those flaggers in.

The AI as shown in the video was toned down a bit, and there may be a lot of small changes to them in the coming weeks, so do not be surprised if several slight updates are released in the next few weeks, but I doubt any Sandbox work will be done. I’m pretty sure you can’t throw cars over the walls.

Major thanks to JR Franklin, Ike, Mike Rutana, Carmen Hardy, Kristina Ryan, Nikki, and psugorilla for helping me test this.